I am a Windows tech and I wonder that same thing all the time. Windows drags along with it all this old crap from 1984 for "backward compatibility" to satisfy its business customers except that after all these years the system has become such a mess that no one is really satisfied anymore. I'll say this for Mac and Linux, they aren't afraid to make a break with the past when it is necessary. Windows is my bread and butter but it ain't my favorite--my shameful secret is that I use Linux at home. DB

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I still have a 486, any 32-bit Windows would run too slow and add the big amount of bugs that theses OS have. My partners have to reinstall them about 3 times a year and crash about 6 or more times a week. Anyway I can't afford a faster machine everytime that Microsoft releases a "new" OS. The software always defeats hardware. Mac almost never crashes but it can't communicate with anybody. Jose.

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You dont have to explain anything to these dumb asses. They already know. They are just trying to pick a fight.

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I'll say out front that I'm not a fan of windows 3.1 but... It's good that PCs offer backwards compatablity. In August 1995 when Microsoft introduced it's new totally redone operating system that had a lot of advantages over previous microsoft products. But you could still use your old crusty ISA cards and your old 3.1 and DOS apps, since most apps were 3.x they are however phasing out DOS and ISA support as they are less and less used. Macintosh on the other hand is more sudden. Suddenly they introduce a new wave of computers and you are left with non compatible hardware, it isn't phased out, it's sudden. Linux is compatible on any 386 and above processor supporting almost any hardware, as long as someone wrote a driver that will forever be valid for the device, in any higher kernal versions. However the Xwindow technology is old and has problems and should be replaced, which is why X isn't in MacOS X. I have used a Mac that locked up at the desktop when it wasn't doing anything, and I have heard of ones that freeze when another machine accesses a DHCP server or a firewire device is restarted. Not to mention the fact that they don't use real multitasking. I use win95 fine on my i486-50 16 MB RAM never freezes never reinstalled windows. But if you prefeer something else I won't hold anything against you.

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Peer has the right idea. i try to use as many OSes as I can just to see what they're like. I'm personally a born again Linux/BSD type person, but I do use Windows on a daily basis (it's great for people too lazy to figure out how their computer works - same deal with MacOS). It's all a matter of fitting the OS with the hardware and the job. You don't use Windows ME to run a high volume webserver, and I don't play games on AIX (IBM's unix for large fileservers). That just makes sense. =^)

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Well I love Windows 3.1 I am not into all of Microsofts new buggy bloatware s---. Small,compact, & gets the job done. Still plenty of software out there for it to in abandonware sites. I have a pentium II pc running Windows for Workgroups/Dos 6.2. For the basic pc user, who doesn't need all the multimedia s---, games, etc Windows 3.1 works just fine.

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On my pentium III it boots faster than any newer version of Windows I've used & runs the internet great. Use Windows 3.1/Calmira. And I have loads of hard disk space left after I installed it.

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(it's great for people too lazy to figure out how their computer works - same deal with MacOS) This argument would be valid were it not for the fact that PCs have NEVER been sold to the general public as highly technical devices requiring specialized skills and training just to get them to OPERATE AS ADVERTISED. Were this the case, there would be far fewer PCs in use today. (As it is, only a little over 50 percent of households in the U.S. currently have access to PCs.) It's also not a question of laziness or ignorance. There are postings on this board from highly skilled computer technicians who are baffled by unexpected glitches and bugs. Computers today seem to be where cars were in the early 1900s--when you had to learn to be a mechanic as well as a driver.

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