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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 16 2019, @09:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the That's-only-two-in-binary dept.

For experienced IT veterans—and PC enthusiasts—there is a common wisdom about the latency between when a version of Windows is released, and when those releases become reliable. Windows XP is the primary example of this, as the original release of XP lacked a variety of important security protections—a rebuilt firewall enabled by default, support for NX bit, and finally disabling the Windows Messenger service abused by spammers, were added in Service Pack 2, three years and a day after XP was first released.

And so, that leaves us with our present circumstances with Windows 10. Roughly seven weeks ago—on May 21—Version 1903 (or 19H1), otherwise known as the May 2019 Update, was released. This marks three years, nine months, and 22 days since the initial release of Windows 10. Reception has been politely positive, though problems with the launch have prompted Microsoft to require users to remove USB storage devices or SD cards before upgrading; likewise, the update was blocked on the Surface Book 2 because a driver problem renders it incapable of seeing the NVIDIA GPU in the base of the high-end model.

Given the positioning of Windows 10 as being essentially the last version of Windows (similar to the way Mac OS X has been around since 2001), it is potentially unwise to declare this exact point in time "as good as it gets." Microsoft's track record is likely to back up this claim, though—at best, Microsoft can deliver iterative changes on top of Windows 10, but the biannual release cadence does not lend itself to massive changes, and further iterative changes are not going to convince the skeptics. If you don't like Windows 10 now, you're not going to like it in the future.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-three-years-later-why-this-is-as-good-as-it-gets/


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  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday July 17 2019, @03:16AM (2 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday July 17 2019, @03:16AM (#867820) Journal

    All I want is Windows XP, its all I have ever wanted.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 17 2019, @03:25AM (1 child)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday July 17 2019, @03:25AM (#867822)

    Win XP SP 3 was peak Windows, in my view.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @02:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @02:41PM (#868005)

      XP3 was the last version of windows I spent serious time on.

      If there had been an XP X64 Retail release, I likely would have migrated to that, but since it was only available OEM during a narrow window where memory capacities wouldn't have warranted it, I didn't.

      That said, XP X64 runs pretty nice on a Nehalem or Opteron with 48-128GB of RAM if you have it available. Unfortunately, it also has some flaws that can result in the need to reboot to work around memory fragmentation issues, like various versions of windows before it.

      For people who aren't aware: Windows XP X64 was a Desktop version of Windows Server 2003 64 Bit with DirectX support and the XP desktop. Very nice for its time, and ran most 32bit windows apps acceptably. Sadly 64 bit is mostly broken due to Vista+ Assumptions made in 2008/2010 and later compilers.