[vcf-midatlantic] Ages of PC based software

[John Heritage]

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 at 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 at gmail.com
> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>