Ages of PC based software
Hello! I am again trying one of my blue sky ideas, one to work on between right now, and again of the next repair weekend. That will be onsite. Would any of you good people remember the time period for a representative OS for when we can call it a Vintage Operating system? Last time I checked it was 1995. No velociraptor, he is visiting relatives in California, and Oregon and WA. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
I’d say Windows ME (2000) or older. On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 4:22 PM Gregg Levine via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello! I am again trying one of my blue sky ideas, one to work on between right now, and again of the next repair weekend. That will be onsite.
Would any of you good people remember the time period for a representative OS for when we can call it a Vintage Operating system? Last time I checked it was 1995.
No velociraptor, he is visiting relatives in California, and Oregon and WA. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
I don't mean to be critical of any person's passions, but I wanted to elaborate on the topic of what vintage means. In the context of our hobby, I am against the idea that simply being old means something is "vintage". While there are plenty of old things that are cool, that we miss, and that we want to preserve, I don't feel that all "old" stuff deserves to be preserved in a museum or exhibited at a show. The key word that I have come to realize as an important qualifier is "innovative" (groundbreaking, the "first", revolutionary, etc.). The opposite qualifier that disqualifies something from being vintage would be the word "derivative". If something is just a slight improvement over what came before, is it truly special? For example (and maybe not the ideal example), if we are talking about Windows operating systems, I would say that Windows 3.1 and/or Windows 95 might fit my criteria. With hardware, maybe the first IBM PC with the 8086 is innovative, but all PCs that followed are basically derivative. Sure, you can make a case about some specific aspect that is a major improvement that might qualify it as innovative, and if so great, make that case. But just being old doesn't make something special, exhibitable, or museum worthy. Just my perspective and hopefully something to think about. Chris On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 4:25 PM Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I’d say Windows ME (2000) or older.
On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 4:22 PM Gregg Levine via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello! I am again trying one of my blue sky ideas, one to work on between right now, and again of the next repair weekend. That will be onsite.
Would any of you good people remember the time period for a representative OS for when we can call it a Vintage Operating system? Last time I checked it was 1995.
No velociraptor, he is visiting relatives in California, and Oregon and WA. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
Vintage means "of a particular era" so vintage 2000's OS is Windows 98/ME, WIndows NT/2000. Otherwise you're just chasing a year and each year "vintage" is whatever that particular year minus 30 is. Which to me is silly but everyone insists (since the dawn of "vintage computing") to bracket a range a dates around "vintage computing" which then elicits the 800 peanut gallery responses about what everyone thinks vintage computing is and it goes around and around and around and around and around. At least consider there has to be a better way. Bill On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 4:22 PM Gregg Levine via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello! I am again trying one of my blue sky ideas, one to work on between right now, and again of the next repair weekend. That will be onsite.
Would any of you good people remember the time period for a representative OS for when we can call it a Vintage Operating system? Last time I checked it was 1995.
No velociraptor, he is visiting relatives in California, and Oregon and WA. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
Personally I would say windows Xp But that OS is still used in may ways And can still get on the “internet” with the correct browser Yes this is opening a can of worms ! Mike R. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.
On Jun 26, 2024, at 4:22 PM, Gregg Levine via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello! I am again trying one of my blue sky ideas, one to work on between right now, and again of the next repair weekend. That will be onsite.
Would any of you good people remember the time period for a representative OS for when we can call it a Vintage Operating system? Last time I checked it was 1995.
No velociraptor, he is visiting relatives in California, and Oregon and WA. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
My answer is more hardware+software than OS only, but when I look at the time I really got into computers (the 1980s).. A "good computer' in 1985 was substantially more capable than a "good computer" from 1980. And again, by 1990-1992, a "good computer" was again substantially better than that 1985 "good" computer. To me vintage is when you go back far enough that the paradigm / capability is substantially less (or "several times less") than whatever is contemporary. If we're focused on Windows -- XP seems like the end of an era. Real pivoting in both how we use computers (iPhone, actual good tablets, 64-bit OSes on desktop, SaaS, etc.) largely happened as XP was getting long in the tooth. If XP was it's own era, the next older era of capability prior to that would be the mid to late 1990s OSes -- OS/2, Windows 9x, Classic MacOS, some flavors of UNIX, and perhaps Palm Pilot OS. These all seem vintage to me, but XP era PCs definitely have a lot of legacy .. I feel like there's also a couple of logical Linux divides that could support this argument, though to me the hardware drove a lot of OS capability for a very long time. (i.e. Pentium 3 with SSE was fast enough for useful speech recognition on a desktop PC, and a 100+ MHz 486 could start to play MP3s well). Longer discussion here of course. Hope this helps.. On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 4:22 PM Gregg Levine via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello! I am again trying one of my blue sky ideas, one to work on between right now, and again of the next repair weekend. That will be onsite.
Would any of you good people remember the time period for a representative OS for when we can call it a Vintage Operating system? Last time I checked it was 1995.
No velociraptor, he is visiting relatives in California, and Oregon and WA. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
participants (6)
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Chris Fala -
Dean Notarnicola -
Gregg Levine -
John Heritage -
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