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I don't think it makes much sense to use the latest update dates as any sort of indication for that though, old stuff with updates is still old (e.g. a simple w

I don't think it makes much sense to use the latest update dates as any sort of indication for that though, old stuff with updates is still old (e.g. a simple way to think of it, fixing some old radio from the 20s wont make it any less old unless you change the entire mechanism and even then assuming you didn't modify that, the "interface" would still be the same). It might have been long lived but the overall user experience didn't change much between the original release and the very last release. You can see a screenshot or even a video of the original WinXP and the last WinXP patch and they'd look and feel almost the same. On a similar note, when people play around with 90s retro PCs, they often install software, patches and drivers released in the early 2000s (or even late 2000s or sometimes recent stuff) - that doesn't make these machines any less "90s PCs" either.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I'd just say software is a bit different than hardware. Hardware is quite fixed in time while software is ever changing. XP is really just an iteration of WinNT to unify MS's home and enterprise codebases and XP was really just a point in time snapshot of the code on its way from NT through to 11 today.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  Yes but what the users actually associate with the WinXP time period isn't the look&feel and UX of Win NT 3.1 nor the look&feel and UX of Win11, it is the very specific look& feel and UX of Windows XP which didn't really change much in later SPs. And yeah, sure, a machine running XP in 2014 (or later, people didn't stop using WinXP because Microsoft officially dropped support) isn't really retro, but the original argument was "WinXP era" machines which at least i'd put them into the early to midlate 2000s, when WinXP was the mainstream OS, before Vista started being used by the mainstream. PCs are very backwards compatible and unlike a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64, they are highly modular, so using edge cases (like WinXP being supported until 2014) isn't really that representative - by 2014 people had moved on to Win8.x and Win10 release was just some months away. Meanwhile almost every PC from 2003 or so, which originally would run only WinXP, can run Windows 8 - but aside from curiosity, nobody would really do that in practice. But still despite this vagueness, people do see those older PCs as retro. Even personally, despite growing up with XT clones, i cannot see the Athlon64 PC i bought in 2003 as anything else than a retro PC, even if it can run some modern indie games (at like 2 FPS :-).

hotpotamus 4y ago

I'd just say software is a bit different than hardware. Hardware is quite fixed in time while software is ever changing. XP is really just an iteration of WinNT to unify MS's home and enterprise codebases and XP was really just a point in time snapshot of the code on its way from NT through to 11 today.

badsectoracula 4y ago
Yes but what the users actually associate with the WinXP time period isn't the look&feel and UX of Win NT 3.1 nor the look&feel and UX of Win11, it is the very specific look& feel and UX of Windows XP which didn't really change much in later SPs. And yeah, sure, a machine running XP in 2014 (or later, people didn't stop using WinXP because Microsoft officially dropped support) isn't really retro, but the original argument was "WinXP era" machines which at least i'd put them into the early to midlate 2000s, when WinXP was the mainstream OS, before Vista started being used by the mainstream. PCs are very backwards compatible and unlike a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64, they are highly modular, so using edge cases (like WinXP being supported until 2014) isn't really that representative - by 2014 people had moved on to Win8.x and Win10 release was just some months away. Meanwhile almost every PC from 2003 or so, which originally would run only WinXP, can run Windows 8 - but aside from curiosity, nobody would really do that in practice. But still despite this vagueness, people do see those older PCs as retro. Even personally, despite growing up with XT clones, i cannot see the Athlon64 PC i bought in 2003 as anything else than a retro PC, even if it can run some modern indie games (at like 2 FPS :-).