What Operating Systems Have You Used

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A survey.

[MayorTim 16]

Wheres OS X? I am using Windows, though I would MUCH rather be on a Mac.

[defcon pilot 0]

I'm running Mac OS X 10.4.4 Tiger. I installed an update... Used to be 10.4.3. Runs smoothly, and the 64-bit processor speeds things up quite a bit, even though it's only 1.4 Ghz. It has great sound and video cards as well. And when it comes to Web browsing, I feel almost as though I have DSL.

BTW, why don't you add Mac options to your survey?

[Praetorian Cohort 0]

All Windows XP at my home. I'm trying to convince my parents to get a 20" iMac so we can dual boot Windows XP and OS X off it, but my mom hates Apple.

[hym 358]

Running XP.

[Zelgadis 638]

Ya forgot Mac OS. I've got 10.4.3. It's pretty good.

In the past, I've owned, in descending order:

OS 10.2

OS 10.1

OS 9

OS 8

Windows 3.1

Basic

ISF

[vidioman 21]

I've owned windows 95 and windows XP home, and I've used windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and an older Mac OS (in 1998 I think) not sure what it would be though.

[Skink000 0]

I think the first was IBM DOS, cant remember the version, with Windows 3.1 on the side.
Then DRDOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 OEM   and now Windows XP Pro w/SP2 that seams the most stable of the bunch.
My first machine ran off two 5 1/4" floppies and no HD (a Tandy  hahahahahaha), I'd leave a simple fractal running overnight.

[lakeyboy 12]

I am using XP SP2 but I have used Windows 95 & 98 on my older computer. Have nothing to do with Macs and I'm not touching Linix. Too scary if the computer goes wacky.

[Mantis747 1]

I've always used windows.

Windows is good because most things are built and made for XP, ME, 2000.

Ive never even tried Mac. I heard that Mac is better than windows for pictures and graphics.

Is Simcity 4 different on mac?

[sloppet 3]

Win XP pro

[organicsabre 1]

Well at home i have windows XP, at work it depends on what amchine I deal with as I am the IT technician as wella s an Architects for the small practice I work for. We Have Macs and our plot server uses Mac OS 9.1, Secretaries use the older G3's with mac OS X10.1, 5 computers use Mac OS X10.3.9 and the new G5 uses Mac OS X 10.4.5. (yes there are some compatability problems ont he network, those mainly with 10.4 due to appletalk being non existant in this version. I ahve previously used at home XP, 2000, millenium (lasted 1 week, before I went back to 98) win 98, 95 (terrible!!) 3.1 and windows 2.1 and windows 1.0 (when it first came out in the late 80's)

And Skin, yup I owned a Tandy 88 (not even a 286!!!!) but I had a 3.5inch floppy (careful now!) and a 5.25 inch one with a wopping 40mb hardrive and its cost my father

[Skink000 0]

Hi organicsaber,

Yup had a Tandy 3000, fortunatly one of their "bussines" machines , which ment it wasnt as prioritised and I could use an ATI graphics card that went all the way up to 1024x768 in VGA and Relysys (not sure bout spelling) monitor.
Cant remember 1st HD, know it was tiny and paid BIG bucks for it.

Sorry for off topic.

[Constantina 5]

I used quite a lot of Operating systems when I first went on the computer about 1995?. The first computer I used was a MS-DOS type, where to run programs, you had to insert a floppy disk. I remember some program names like AllWrite. My first personal computer was Windows 2000, where it had a touchscreen. I came across a number of operating systems since 1995: MS-DOS, Windows 97, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I came across a couple of Mackintosh computers,.

-------------------------

Constantina

at Athens and Midlands, NSWiki, SC4EVER.com and Simtropolis

London 2012

[Superstar 69]

I started of with a Windows 95 back in the days when I didn't have much a clew about computers, later I got Windows 98 which was a pretty good upgrade. Just two years ago from now I got XP which I'm using now as so far i has been the best when it came to performance.

Now I'm already planning for Vista

[DaMaster_architect 0]

why are there so many windows OSs listed in that survey, but only one Linux OS? there are soooo many linux distributions.

Please, don't ignore linux! It's far better than windows, and I tell you that from my own experience. The only thing they need to improve is the difficulty of using linux... at ubuntu, things go pretty easy, but at other linux distributions, sometimes it's really a hard time to get things done.

Hence, the most important ones are:

- ubuntu (5.10) linux

- SuSE 10

- Mandrake

- Redhat

- Fedora

and so on.

[Voar Tok 4]

I've used a variety in the past years.  These are the ones that I have actually used on some sort of regular basis.

Something from Texas Instruments
Lotus 1-2-3
MS-DOS
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows XP

I've had the privilege of using an Apple from so far back that it didn't have a GUI on it, just the old-school green text on a black screen.  And who still uses Windows 95?

[Superstar 69]

Umm...I by accident pressed Windows 95

Once I saw the threads title I thought it meant what OS did you used to use and so I pressed it to realize just a second later that it's meaning the curent one...sorry

[Zelgadis 638]

Originally posted by: Mantis747

I've always used windows.

Windows is good because most things are built and made for XP, ME, 2000.

Ive never even tried Mac. I heard that Mac is better than windows for pictures and graphics.

Is Simcity 4 different on mac?quote>

SimCity 4 is a bit different on a Mac, but it's the same in all the important respects.

It all boils down to what you like. I like Mac, so I use it.

My past computers (with OS's listed) have been (with year of manufacture):

PowerMac G4 1.25 Ghz with OS 10.2 and 10.4 (2004)

iBook G3 300 Mhz with OS 9, 10.1 and 10.2 (1999)

PowerMac G3 233Mhz with OS 8, 9, 10.1, and 10.2 (1998)

Toshiba 386 33Mhz lugable with Windows 3.1 (1988)

Atari 800 (1982... I think)

Of the five, three, the G4, iBook, and Atari, are still going strong.

And SC4 runs fine on the new one. I've found that performance has improved with my latest OS upgrade.

(Yeah, I know I put this before, but I thought I'd make it more detailed. I particularly like the big technological leap in both power and OS that I took between the Toshiba and PowerMac)

ISF

[Voar Tok 4]

Originally posted by: Superstar

Umm...I by accident pressed Windows 95 Once I saw the threads title I thought it meant what OS did you used to use and so I pressed it to realize just a second later that it's meaning the curent one...sorry quote>

You forever skewed the results!  How could you?

JK  I've done that before.  In fact, I practically did it with this poll too.

[Ratieya455 1]

I have 2000 Professional on this thing, and I like it a lot. I have used basically every Windows operating system on the computers my family has had over the years: -Windows 3.1 on a 486 50MHz by Leading Technology -Windows 95 (A) on a 100MHz Pentium Packard Bell (awful computer, extra buggy version of 95) -Windows 95 (B) on a 75MHz Toshiba laptop -Windows 98 on a 300MHz AMD K6 Compaq (even more awful computer, even more buggy edition of 98) -Windows 98SE on a 550MHz HP (my grandma still uses it) -Windows ME on a 733MHz AMD Duron micronpc.com (has 2000 on it now) -Windows 2000 on my AMD AthlonXP 3000+ mutt -Windows XP on a 2.0GHz P4 Dell (family computer)

[Duke87 1,070]

Heh. The first computer we ever owned was a mid-1980's Atari. I have no cue what model it was, or what you would cal the OS it used, but I can tell you that it lacked a hard drive. All its software and stuff was on 3.5" floppy disks. It had gone in and out of basments and attics sevral times, but the last time it was up and running was in the late 90's on top of my dresser. Then one day the disk drive stopped working, so you coud start up the computer fine, but you couldn't actually do anything with it once you got it running. It was promptly disconnected and is still sitting in a box in our boiler room. We can't bring ourtselves to get rid of it....

Next, in the Spring of 1994, my grnadfather unloaded his old Mac on us. We continued to use it until we got our own computer that christmas, a Gateway 2000 486 with 8MB RAM, 730MB hard drive space, and running Windows 3.1.1 along with MS-DOS. My grandfather then took the Mac back. I have no idea what became of it. The Gateway 2000 remained up and running through 2002, and afte that got disused since the CD-ROM drive stopped working. This past summer ('05), we dismantled the hard drive, putting the RAM in a ziploc bag, saving tha actual hard disk itself in case we ever wanted anything off of it and found a computer we could attach it to as a slave. Everything else was then either thrown away or taken to my room to be ripped apart with screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, a hacksaw, and a hammer. Great stress relief, actually. Unlike we had expected, it didn't crash after Y2K, but it did think it was January 1st of 1984... And since it was using the old 2 digit year system, we couldn't change the date to 2000, so we just left it.

The next computer came into the house Christmas of 1998. It was a Dell, running Windows 98, with a Pentium II, 128MB RAM, and a 12GB hard drive. In February of 2000, this computer crashed after the files for Duke Nukem 3D became horribly corrupted for some unknown reason, and said software was attempted to be run. No, we never got a blue screen of death. What happened was that after exiting the game, it automatically started back up again. We couldn't turn off the computer properly, so we pulled the plug. Then it wouldn't boot up. We had to use the emergency boot disk to get it running. It regained most of its functionality, but we still experienced several strange bugs with it. Often, after booting up, the sound would get stuck on mute. And later other programs started experiencing weird little glitches. Then, in January of 2002, it crashed again, and this time was unrecoverable. We did manage to get all of the important files and stuff off of it by making it a slave hard drive to my grandfather's computer, though. The hard drive to it is sitting in the downstairs coste, along with the gateway hard drive, an old server from my dad's office, a buch of old artwork by me and my sisters from preschool and elementary school, my mom's sewing machine, the extra leaves to the dining room table, and lots of other junk.

We immediately got a new computer. This time it was a Sony Vaio, running Windows XP with 512MB Ram, an 80GB hard drive and a pentium 4. This computer suffered minor damage when our chimney was hit by lightning in August of 2002. We had all the plugs on a surge protector, but the coaxial cable for the internet was not. Thus, the ethernet card was fried, and later on a couple of programs would start experienceing minor glitches. This computer is still up and running in the younger of my two sisters' room, and is 'her computer'.

About the same time, my mom also decided to get a laptop. It was also a Sony Vaio with Windows XP,but this one was a pentium III, since at the time they hadn't put Pentium 4s in laptops yet. I'm not sure of the Hard drive size or RAM capacity, though. We still have this computer, and my dad uses it as his.

After the lightning incident, our insurance paid for a replacement computer of exactly the same type. This was the computer I was using when I registered here, and the one I used up until July of '05. It's now in the older of my two sisters' rooms and is 'her computer'.

In July of 2005, with the prospect of me going off to college in the fall, we did something we'd been talking about doing for a while. We made it so that al 5 family members (me, my parents and my 3 sisters) had their own computer. A wireless home network was set up to connect them. This meant getting two new computers. One of them is the one that my mom currently uses. I'm not sure of the exact specs, but I know it's the most powerful of the five. The other is the laptop that became mine and is what I am currently typing this on. Hewlett Packard, Pentium M, 100GB hard drive, 1GB RAM. So far the only damage on it is that one of the three USB ports is busted, and the L key on the keyboard gets finnicky and sometimes doesn't register when I press it. I'm not sure why exactly the USB port broke, but I know that the issue with the L key is because a partially uncoiled wire from an old spiral-bound notebook found its way under the key and pried it off. I was able to stick it back on, but it still is finnicky, is noticably misaligned, and on occasion partially pops back off.

Note to be aware of:
-it is a common mistake that Windows and DOS are two completely seperate operating systems. They never were, and still aren't. Windows is but a DOS shell: a GUI that builds on the DOS coding. Starting with Windows 95, the idea of exiting Windows to DOS was scrapped, but you could still run dos stuff by opening up a DOS prompt in a window.
In fact, even Windows XP is still a DOS shell. It now runs almost completely under the surface, but DOS is still the coding base. If you attempt to run an old DOS program, you may notice a window with DOS text up before the program takes over the screen. And you can, if you have the knowhow, still access the DOS at any time and work with it. Just go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>Command Prompt.

[amal81 3]

I have used MSDOS with some of the earliest version availbale on an 8088 based computers. since then i have upgraded from 8088 to 80386 to 80486 to 80586 to pentium MMX to pentium 2 to pentium 3 to pentium 4 to now AMD 64. with that i have also used all kind of operating systems. The last version of DOS i used before upgrading to Windows 95 was MSDOS 6.22. so here it is chronologically

1989-95 DOS 1.0 to 3.0

1995-96 DOS 6.22 - WIN3.1 - WIN3.11 [Win3.1 wasnt really an operating system]

1996-97 Windows 95

1997-98 Windows 97 [windows 95 had a major upgrade]

1998-2000 Windows 98

2000- 2001 Windows Me

and 2001 to .... Windows xp with Service pack 2

[MayorTim 16]

I decided to reply again and give a history of the computers I have used. My family first got an IBM computer running Windows 95 when I was about 6. It was mostly for my mom and dad, but my parents did get my a game to boost my reading skills, and thus started my love of video games. I am not sure at all about the specs of the computer, I knew nothing at all about it other than I had a game on it, and that it ran Windows 95. I continued to use this computer mostly for playing SimCity 3000 Unlimited up until 2001, when we bought a Dell running Windows XP. I have never used Windows 98, and from what I hear about it, I consider myself lucky. Anyway I used this computer all the way up untill last Christmas, when I finally grew tired of its sluggish prefromance and bought a nice new Dell XPS 400. I am now happily enjoying the Intel Pentium D at 3.0ghz, the Nvidia 6800, the 1gb RAM, and the 250gb hard drive. The 20" Widescreen Dell Ultrasharp LCD and 5.1 Dell Gaming speakers aren't all that bad either.

[beebs 129]

Mostly used macs, but my last two computers are XP. I remember my parents first computer... one of those old old macs, black and white screen. The massive floppy disks to play games and stuff. Good times.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Interesting that nearly everyone is in the Microsoft trap.

The first personal computer I ever used was my nephew's VIC 20.  It really did have 20K of memory.  GW-BASIC only.

My first personal computer was a Trash-80.  128KB, and 2 5" floppies.  Later upgraded to 640K.

My current machine is an AMD 2400+ with 768MB orginally built by HP.  I have updated the hard disks and got rid of the OEM XP Home and put in XP Pro.  Built in NVIDIA graphics.  Runs SC4 well.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

XP, but if I knew how I'd be using Mandrake Linux.

[tonkawom 1]

Well I started out with TRS-DOS, 2.3,1.3,6.x, and from there migrated to a C-64, so that means basically GEOS, and basic, then I went to Amiga, 1.3.2.1,3.x, then MSDOS, then Windows, 2.0,3.0,3.1,3.11,95/98/me/XP/XP-64.

Lots of computer history there.....

[Ratieya455 1]

The most recently-acquired computer in my family is a Texas Instruments 99/4A from 1981. I found it in a garage while working last fall. I got a bunch of games for it off eBay, but it's not a very useful machine, otherwise. It would be if I knew basic.

[Ma8thew 77]

Windows is no longer a DOS shell. All 'home' versions up until ME (shudder) were DOS shells. Windows NT is Microsofts other kernal. This was used on the 'business' line, until XP, when all versions of Window were based on NT. Thus, Windows is no longer a DOS shell. BTW, DOS is based on QDOS, standing for Quick and Dirty Operating System.