The upgrade urge
 

As people here tried to tell me not to upgrade to XP, it made me think.

People always have advice on whether or not to upgrade.

Consider a sliding scale of -3 to 3, where:

3 = Excellent or even revolutionary new features, bug fixes, things you need and a style you want; will improve your life.
2 = It's good, but not immediately necessary; you'll want to eventually upgrade, but you don't need it tomorrow; there may be a few quirks
1 = Generally recommended, but not at all necessary; a few improvements here and there
0 = You might want to upgrade but then again you may not; or, nobody can tell the difference
-1 = Generally not recommended; bugs or bloat outweigh the advantages
-2 = There may be a few nice bits but most people find it a problem and/or a pain
-3 = Upgrading considered harmful; new version breaks desireable features, loses data, causes government corruption or societal upheaval

That's the scale, now, do we agree on our perceptions of the advice out there? Consider the following upgrades, and tell me whether my perception matches yours.

Win 3.1 -> Win95: at release, 1; now, 3
Win95 -> Win98: at release, 0; now, 2
Win98 -> WinME: at release, 0; now, -1
Win98 -> WinNT4: at release, 1; now, 2
Anything ->Win2000: at release, 1; now, 2
Win98 -> WinXP: now, -2
Win2000 -> WinXP: now, -2

Office 95 -> Office 97: now, 1
Office 97 -> Office2K: now, 0
Office2K -> OfficeXP: now, 0

This even works outside the software world.

Vinyl -> CD: at release, 2; now, 3
VHS -> DVD: at release, -1; now, 2

Re: The upgrade urge
 

CD -> MiniDisc: at release, 1; now, -2
PS -> PS2: at release, 2; now, 3
cassette -> DCC: at release, 1; now, -20

heh

MacOS 9 --> MacOS X: at release, -1; now, 2
CRT --> LCD: at release, -1; now 1

Yeah. OS X is niiiiiiice. Both my iBook and my PowerMac run it exclusively and I'm loving it.

Once I can get a 19" LCD with a maxres of 1600x1200 with good flicker-free refresh (disclaimer: I am largely ignorant of current LCD technology in this area) for about $500, I will be all over that shit. Until then, my GDM-F400 and CPD-G400 - http://www.digipulse.org/images/setup.jpg - will do quite nicely.

Netscape 3.x -> 4.x - at release: -1; now: -3

:)

Re: The upgrade urge
 

Hmmm. My experience with Win 3.1-> Win95 was colored by early Win32 expereince with the NT4 preview, which grafted the Win31 GUI onto NT 3.5. When Win95 showed up shortly thereafter it was a *serious* improvement over WIn3.1, and I was already trained in the new GUI, so I would have given it more than a "1" at release.

I'm starting to realize how little I care about Windows anymore, though. It's been nine months snce it's been an everyday part of my life. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Who?
 

Odd, that Far Side calendar looks like it features Hobbes.

That gum you like is going to come back in style.

i palyed with XP for about a week, screw that ill stick to 2k, sure its harder to set things up initially/more time consuming but when it breaks under XP, its royal pain in the ass to fix. NOt to mention DRM/Spyware/BLot factor. 2k is nice, its stable, featured, fast. Although i'm trying lycoris later today after hearing many a good thing, so ill psot a review of that soon. Looks fantasic for converting desktops.

Re: The upgrade urge
 

I'm curious why you changed your mind, Tony... I think I'd give it the same ratings you did, and for one reason only: almost no USB devices will install under Windows 95. Some did, but for the most part, if you want a USB anything to plug into your computer, you need 98. That's the ONLY thing that finally made me blow my $$$ on a 98 upgrade for my home computer back in December. It wasn't a big hassle at the time, but with USB much more popular, it's much harder to find (say) a digital camera or an MP3 player that can deal with a serial or parallel port.

USB is a huge selling point. Also selling is that Win95 wouldn't run my mother's upgraded mainboard at the full clock speed; it was an Athlon 1400 but I had to run it at 1000 until I could get Win98 installed.

Plus, some people just use the web browser that came with their system, and the browser installed with Win95 is an ancient IE that isn't very standards-compatible. Win98 has IE4 which is fine.