On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 09:18:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/21/2016 8:24 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| I found XP to be more robust than 7even or Vista

I've found that, too. Vista/7 is a brittle system, and
with so many restrictions it's not easy to fix things
that go wrong. I was trying to install IE11 recently
on Win7-64 or on a Win7-32 laptop. I couldn't get it
to work on either one! Microsoft's own browser, which
hardly runs anywhere to begin with. Only Win7/8/10
are supported. Yet it wouldn't install.

Win7-32 needed SP1, but that wouldn't install because,
it said, there were problematic customizations. ???
It's an extra laptop that's hardly ever used.

On Win7-64 IE11 kept saying it needed to download
patches first. It was ridiculous that it should *require*
post SP1 patches that are not in the installer. As it
turned out, those patches either weren't relevant or
were already installed. That didn't satisfy IE11. By the
time I was through, Win7 was unstable and a warning on
the Desktop was telling me that it was not "genuine".
(It's a Dell. Windows should have been able to see that.)
I finally ended up reinstalling from a disk image. The sheer
incompetence displayed with that IE11 fiasco is
jaw-dropping. IE10 was similar. I've never managed to
update beyond IE9 on that computer. Not that I care
a great deal. I only want it for testing webpages. But
it's inexcusable that they can't even make their own
browser software install on their own product without
problems.

In my case, I have tens of $K invested in software.
I don't want to "have to update" JUST BECAUSE THE OS
DOESN'T WANT TO "play nice" -- with a program that has
been working JUST FINE on an earlier OS.

That's a waste of money (buying a new license), time
(installing the new version), experience (RE-learning
a product that has been working fine) AND potential
risk (how many new bugs will I have to discover??).

"What is this going to *buy* me? Why do I want to take
on those COSTS if there isn't something to offset it??"

Granted, some apps work better in a 64b playing field.
So, I'll install them -- and JUST THEM -- on a 64b machine!
No need to bear the costs for moving all of these other
apps that are perfectly happy (and already configured!)
where they are!


So nobody is stopping you from installing the 32 bit version of
windows, either 7, 8, or 10, on your new machine. The license key for
64 bit works just fine to install the 32 bit version.

I downgrades a pile of Win7-64 pro machines to win7-32 pro because we
had a lot of legacy scanners that were not supported on the 64 bit
platform, and we were not about to spend $2400 each to replace 20-some
scanners.

A few have been "upconverted" back to 64 bit since the scanners have
taken themselves out of service.
Does having multiple cores help me write prose faster?
Will it help me come up with an engineering solution
faster ("meatware accelerator")? Does moving the start
menu to a different place make me more productive
(esp if you reflect the cost of adjusting to that change)?
Or, supporting transparency in the window manager??

Or, is all of this just "change for the sake of change"?