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Comment by cons0le | Hacker News Reader

I fired up my 10yrs old windows 7 PC for the first time in forever and was appalled at how snappy and quick the OS was compared to my same spec win10 PC. As a career primarily-microsoft-shop engineer I'm done with windows for personal use. I'll never forgive the for wasting everyones time with this garbage. Meanwhile I constantly find bugs from before 2002 that are still in windows10. Windows honestly made me slowly hate all computers.

The only piece of technology in my life that does exactly what it's supposed to do are my keyboards where I make the firmware. Everything else is pop up ridden dogshit

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I was recently using an ancient Celeron laptop from like 2006 with Windows Vista, a HDD, and something like 256 MB of RAM, and was blown away by how reasonably performant it was compared to my expectations, especially considering it was a budget laptop in its time.

All that performance is still available with Linux, and it's great. I use plenty of modern systems, but my home desktop is over 12 years old (from the last generation of hardware before everything was locked down) with Debian 13. Turn it on, log in, and the fraction of a second it takes for the login screen to disappear is all it takes for the system to be fully up and running.

Have they fixed that sleep mode thing that doesn't work and drains your laptop battery?

"Modern Standby"? No, they haven't. Just make sure to unplug your laptop before you close the lid and it won't melt down.

This was ~2 years ago, but it didn't work on my side. Closing the lid would put the laptop to sleep then quickly wake it up, fan spinning at full speed even if unplugged. I think I used their diagnosing tool and one cause was some non-microsoft (installed by a driver I think, laptop as almost new) scheduled task, so not fully their fault, but forcing this kind of much weaker/unstable sleep without backup when S3 worked well is a bit crazy to me.

(by the way the laptop was a Framework 13 AMD, curious if others experienced the same. Maybe they fixed it now)

For a long time I had issues with my laptop's battery being dead, even when I put it away fully charged.

Until one day when I unpacked it and found that it was both hot and already running, and decided that this had to end.

I found that there was a process that was part of a printer driver which existed only to spam notifications about buying printer supplies, and that some fucking sadist at HP absolutely buried into Windows as a task that would wake the computer to do this even if it was unplugged.

Because that's what I need in my life: A laptop that wakes up to check the supplies on a printer that I don't even own.

(Thanks, HP.)

The Framework 16 had an issue where the closed lid would flex slightly in your backpack, and press keys on the keyboard, waking up the computer. Ten days ago (Nov 14th), Framework released a BIOS update for the 16 that would turn off the keyboard (and numeric pad) when the lid was closed. I installed that update immediately, and for the first time, when I pulled my laptop out of my backpack after leaving the office and going home (or the reverse), it was still suspended. Had nothing to do with Windows drivers (I run Linux on this laptop), was purely a physical issue.

I haven't checked if the Framework 13 got BIOS updates at the same time. But you could check if the keyboard is causing the wakeup (the Framework 13 has the same keyboard as the 16, but its smaller screen means less flexing in a backpack so it might not be suffering the same issue) by opening a Notepad window before putting the computer to sleep and closing the lid. If you find that random characters have been typed into Notepad while it's sleeping, then the issue was the same that the 16 was experiencing: the keyboard needs to be disabled while the lid is closed. If you don't see random typing with the lid closed, then it's a different issue.

> closed lid would flex slightly in your backpack, and press keys on the keyboard,

FYI: Over time, this repeated pressure + rubbing (especially with dust or grit in between) can leave permanent key-shaped marks or “ghosts” on the screen. Thin laptops and bags that are tightly packed or bulging make this a lot more likely, since there’s less rigidity and more pressure on the lid.

Still not? It's a feature everyone needs i'm assuming lots of people at microsoft own laptops. Mac probably figured it out around the same time as the declaration of independence was drafted.

That one is arguably Intel’s fault. The last few generations of intel macbooks did the same thing, and I had the same issues under Linux (except they were debuggable there, and clearly Intel’s problem).

Apple fixed it by switching to their own processors. MacOS is sliding fast too though. If I leave my MacBook plugged in overnight, it’s toasty in the morning at least half the time.

Not sure how many times it died because it was low at night and I forgot to plug it in, and how many were failed sleeps.

Power Nap or whatever it’s called is disabled.

Windows 7 was peak windows

To me that was Windows 2000. One day in 1999, I was at the local bookstore going over computer magazines and one of them came with CD to preview Windows 2000. I was mostly a Windows 98/RedHat user at that point, so I decided to try it out.

It almost instantly won me over with the leap in stability due to the NT kernel, but the craziest thing was this feature called "Hibernate". This was the time when booting was painfully slow, and here was a feature that not just booted rapidly, but dropped me into the previous session with all apps open! It was pure magic. I switched over to Linux exclusively a few years after that, but this was the feature that prolonged that decision for a long time. I don't think Linux ever got a useable hibernate, but the feature became not as necessary due to the advent of SSDs.

Windows 2000 was the last version where Dave Cutler ran the whole show.

There are certainly features in later versions I wouldn't want to live without, but the decay began when he was moved to other products.

Win7 desktops with W2008 backend was a solid platform with robust ecosystem

They blew it all up with Longhorn/Metro, and have been doubling-down on denial ever since.

windows xp pre uac was a golden age ;)

win98 SE

Peak usability by being able to type a url in to the file manager or a local path in to your browser and have it open in the same window.

Same in Nautilus.

and also peak crashibility. con/con, anyone?

I think you're mistaking Windows millennium for Windows 98 SE

I never got into ME. 98SE was my jam.

While we're down this rabbit hole, my favorite bit was wrapping up the versions of windows: CE, ME, and NT: Windows CEMENT.

I feel this even in the edutainment system of my car. It’s one year old. Actual 1-2 second delays per key just to type in an address in the map. wtf is wrong with the industry now.

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