to Tom: what was in that computer?

[Darren Dirt]

Well my computers were winxp before, and 2GB of ram on winxp eight years ago worked okay.

:sigh: I miss XP and its incredibly low system requirements... Who cares how "instantly" your OS loads and gets you to the desktop, if it's painfully slow for most things after only a couple apps are running #CanIgetAnAmen

[Thorin]

You realize I upgraded my computers because WinXP was no longer working adequately on this hardware, right?  Maybe the original XP was lightweight, but by SP3 it wasn't, and neither was Flash nor Java.

[Tom]

XP also probably wouldn't do that great with newer hardware, or say 4GB+ ram. It's not very good with SSDs, tons of ram, or many cores... Also newer GPUs may have issues with XP and driver support.

[Lazybones]

I think we often forget that we upgrade the OS to support NEW hardware and NEW requirements for software..

I sometimes have to go back and deal with older OS, such as XP and 2003 server at which point it becomes VERY clear why the NEW OS is superior.

There are some rather MASSIVE changes that happen ever few generations that you DO NOT want to go back on.

Windows 95.... Native TCP/IP support, Early DirectX support
Windows XP.. Native WiFi Support
Windows 7 ... Native System images support and official HAL separation, TRIM for regular SATA drives, TRUE x64 support / became the preferred release over x86
Windows 8.X ... Native SSD support, true tablet support, native touch screen support throughout the OS

I should note that recently I upgraded my main workstation HD to an SSD... At first I tried to use Clonezilla, but then it donned on me that Since windows 7 you have been able to do a FULL image based OS backup with the machine Running none the less and restore using the native backup tool.