5 ms·
God I wish I could replace Windows 11 with Windows 7
by apatheticonion 2y ago
God I wish I could replace Windows 11 with Windows 7
- sylens 2y agoIt really was the peak of Windows in terms of usability, aesthetics, and speed.
- Koshkin 2y agoAt first, sure. But then, with all the service packs it became all but unusable on the computers on which it came preinstalled and used to run fine.
- kilolima 2y agoThat was Windows 2000.
- mouse_ 2y agoLove 7 and Vista but I have to agree with you there. 2000 is peak function.
- machomaster 2y agoVista? You must be joking, right?
- EvanAnderson 2y agoI'll split hairs and go w/ Windows Server 2003. It has all the XP kernel improvements, very little bloat, but sticks with a mostly Windows 2000 visual style. I ran it as a daily driver on a Thinkpad back in the 2004 - 2010 timeframe and really enjoyed it.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoThere was a 64bit XP around this timeframe as well and can use the classic theme.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoWindows XP 64-bit is based on the Server 2003 code, funnily enough. My old ThinkPad didn't have a 64-bit CPU so I couldn't use it.
- xaldir 2y agoXP 64 was kinda good but crippled by poor driver support and thus stability issues.
- BSDobelix 2y agoYES, Windows Server 2003R2 was the best version of Windows ever. I worked with it professionally for about 8 years, if you just used MS software on it (exchange sql server etc) that thing NEVER crashed, when we deployed a 2003R2 (as opposed to a 2008/2008R2) we referred to it as deploying the VMS (openVMS). BTW: However, i never used the 2003 64-bit version.
- samtheDamned 2y agoIf you haven't heard about it already I think you'd be interested in the [ReactOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Development) project which has been working on building an OS that is binary compatible with Windows Server 2003 while being GPL licensed. It's far from daily drivable but it's a fascinating little project.
- Kwpolska 2y ago
- mixmastamyk 2y agoYou could disable most useless services back then so it could be even faster.
- bambax 2y agoMy primary machine is still running Win7; every time I say this here I get a lot of flak, the only result of which is that every time, I'm a little more afraid to confess it; but I will not move to a more recent version of Windows. Everything works fine and fast; Office 2003 was peak Office (last version before the abominable 'ribbon' that no other windows app ever emulated, which, for such a brilliant idea supposed to revolutionize productivity applications, is a bit strange?); browsers won't update to Manifest V3 so uBlock Origin runs along smoothly; most VST plugins released recently, are compatible with Win7 and those that aren't, usually are bad and bloated. Just today I upgraded the CPU fan to a new one that required to completely take apart the whole casing (because the fan has a plastic mount that needs to be on the other side of the motherboard); doing this, and putting it all together, took maybe 40 minutes? And everything restarted just perfectly afterwards. I love this machine. I have a much newer PC running Ubuntu, but it's just not as good — lots of little annoying details; and a bit unstable.
- user432678 2y agoI am entertaining an idea to acquire the same setup for recreational game development using older tools and libraries. Have you followed any guides or do you have any recommendations where to start? Also how reliable those older mobos? I have heard that capacitors are usually close to a malfunction stage, have you had any issues with hardware so far? Thanks.
- mouse_ 2y agoI use win64devkit on Windows Vista. Modern and up to date devkit and at the same time very lean, portable and practical. https://nullprogram.com/blog/2021/03/11/ https://nullprogram.com/blog/2021/03/11/
- bambax 2y agoMotherboard is from 2009, is on every day, sometimes stays on for a week. Not one problem so far; not sure what I would do if it failed though!
- AlexandrB 2y ago
- a2tech 2y agoI support a lot of different manufacturing places and so see a wide, wide, variety of hardware. You don't know how terrible Windows 11 is until you start going backwards, peeling off layers of the onion. Once you're back to XP/2000, you're like..oh shit. People spent years thinking about how this would all work. And it's crazy fast. Windows snap into place almost instantly. Sure, search doesn't work, but search doesn't work on Windows 11 reliably either. Everything you actually need to work? Works better and faster in the old stuff. When I remote into those machines even the remote session feels faster. How does a Windows XP machine running on a 733mhz machine from the last century feel faster at navigating windows and settings and launching programs than my 3k dollar workstation from last year?
- dharmab 2y agoI'm willing to bet if you put modern SSDs in old computers people would prefer Office 2003 to modern Office.
- a2tech 2y agoOffice 2003 on spinning rust launches and completes tasks faster than modern Office on brand new machines with NVME drives. On that 733mhz machine with Office 2003, Excel will be open within a few seconds if I double click on it--if you move up to a 1ghz+ machine it opens up so fast it might as well be instant.
- joseda-hg 2y agoHow modern can you go with XP? Would you have to do weird adapters/emulators to get a full install working?
- a2tech 2y agoSomeone up thread mentioned that there's a WinXP image available that has a ton of back ported drivers and things baked in for NVME support and modern chipsets. So...pretty darn modern I think!