Good time to leave TP2?

[vonnieglen]

Originally Posted by gTen

To be fair Windows ME has SERIOUS issues...and M$ even admitted that their is an unfix-able memory leak in ME and only fix is to upgrade to XP..it is what effectively killed the 9x based kernel and moved windows to the NT based kernel..

In my rambling I managed to get off subject. I am not trying to dispute that Windows ME had "serious issues". "Memory leaks" can still be an annoying issue even with "NT based kernels". As you know they are usually from wayward hardware or applications. We all have our work-arounds. I doubt whether Microsoft ever said that the only way to fix ME was to upgrade to XP. As I am sure you are aware the two Operating Systems had vastly different hardware requirements.

In my experience helping friends and co-workers who were having difficulties with their ME computers... the problems they were having seldom related to actual "confirmed" problems with ME. Windows ME introduced innovations that we all now take for granted and did it with computers that were more comparible to the TP2 than a current laptop or desktop. At the time I considered ME to be a bit of a resource hog compared to Win98 SE. Windows 2000 was major progress and Windows XP of course was a huge success.

The thread here is about whether it is time to move on from the TP2 to newer devices. This is not unlike the decisions many of us had to make about our hardware as we graduated from Win 3.1 to Win98 to WinME to Win2000 to WinXP to WinVista to Win7. Each new operating system was designed with upgraded hardware in mind.

In the case of the TP2 many of us are using a carrier, Sprint who is telling us if we want to upgrade our hardware past the level of the TP2 we must upgrade our plans and pay much higher monthly fees for essentially the same service in many cases. How much longer would many of us have stuck with our old WinXP computers if our monthly expenses to migrate to Win7 went from something like $90 a month to $180 a month which is approximately what the switch would cost me. I would suggest that many of us would not have bothered to upgrade our harware were that the situation with our computers.

I am thinking that as long as Sprint sticks with this policy, long time users with grandfathered retention plans will be using TP2s for a long long time to come. I predict even after 2ghz quad processor Android 6.8 phones with gigabytes of internal memory are released there will be a dedicated band of partisan cheap skate phone geek brothers and sisters who will be proudly squeezing more out of our TP2 phones. We will be pulling out our TP2s at parties and get-togethers and proudly saying yes I can take a picture of a bar code, I have a customized start up screen that makes it like like an I-phone, I can show you the weather, I can watch a youtube video, I can show you pictures of the last time I went snow mobiling, I have got GPS, I can surf the web and play angry birds, and in just a couple more minutes my customized version of android will finish loading up... I'll show you even more, and I am only paying HALF what you are paying so take that you smarty pants superphone owner newbie. I have been playing a similar game for the past five years with a PPC-6700; my friends have only recently completely lost interest. So I have been forced to up the ante by purchasing two TP2s off of Ebay, but I am hoping to dazzle them for at least a couple more years.

[gTen]

Originally Posted by vonnieglen

In my rambling I managed to get off subject. I am not trying to dispute that Windows ME had "serious issues". "Memory leaks" can still be an annoying issue even with "NT based kernels". As you know they are usually from wayward hardware or applications. We all have our work-arounds. I doubt whether Microsoft ever said that the only way to fix ME was to upgrade to XP. As I am sure you are aware the two Operating Systems had vastly different hardware requirements.

um..ME has pretty much same hardware requirements as XP..

ME
minimum: 150mhz and 32mb ram
recommended: 300mhz and 64mb ram

XP
minimum: 233mhz and 64mb ram
recommended: 300mhz and 128mb ram

My ME computer was considered average at best and it was 1.3ghz with either 256mb ram or 512mb ram..forgot...

Back then hardware requirements weren't that much of an issue..its mostly when Vista came out that it became an issue...

Windows ME was pretty bad..I mean you would run out of ram running Paint brush...it wasn't about the apps...it was just extremely flawed..I'm pretty happy that my next PC I ordered to another channel and got Windows 2000 on it rather then ME...since ME was not selling M$ forced their partners to not give 2000 to consumers and not offer NT and 98 either as an option..only ME..they later got sued and lost for it >.>

I mean people complain about Vista but as many issues that it has I am ok with it after experiencing ME..and I consider myself a tech savvy person...the best day was when I finally got an XP upgrade CD and upgraded ME to XP..I had norton installed on my pc at the time that I upgraded (and yes I know back then Norton was a memory hog too)..and XP asked me to put my ME cd to upgrade..when I did Norton said my win ME was a virus..priceless lol (It was a false positive but definitely funny)

The thread here is about whether it is time to move on from the TP2 to newer devices. This is not unlike the decisions many of us had to make about our hardware as we graduated from Win 3.1 to Win98 to WinME to Win2000 to WinXP to WinVista to Win7. Each new operating system was designed with upgraded hardware in mind.

In the case of the TP2 many of us are using a carrier, Sprint who is telling us if we want to upgrade our hardware past the level of the TP2 we must upgrade our plans and pay much higher monthly fees for essentially the same service in many cases. How much longer would many of us have stuck with our old WinXP computers if our monthly expenses to migrate to Win7 went from something like $90 a month to $180 a month which is approximately what the switch would cost me. I would suggest that many of us would not have bothered to upgrade our harware were that the situation with our computers.

I am thinking that as long as Sprint sticks with this policy, long time users with grandfathered retention plans will be using TP2s for a long long time to come. I predict even after 2ghz quad processor Android 6.8 phones with gigabytes of internal memory are released there will be a dedicated band of partisan cheap skate phone geek brothers and sisters who will be proudly squeezing more out of our TP2 phones. We will be pulling out our TP2s at parties and get-togethers and proudly saying yes I can take a picture of a bar code, I have a customized start up screen that makes it like like an I-phone, I can show you the weather, I can watch a youtube video, I can show you pictures of the last time I went snow mobiling, I have got GPS, I can surf the web and play angry birds, and in just a couple more minutes my customized version of android will finish loading up... I'll show you even more, and I am only paying HALF what you are paying so take that you smarty pants superphone owner newbie. I have been playing a similar game for the past five years with a PPC-6700; my friends have only recently completely lost interest. So I have been forced to up the ante by purchasing two TP2s off of Ebay, but I am hoping to dazzle them for at least a couple more years.

Its a little bit of a "unique" decision overall..its not only about the device itself..its that M$ chose to discontinue windows mobile and merge it back into the Windows Embedded tree...so most people are faced with a dilemma of not just getting better hardware..but switching to a new OS as primary altogether..with this comes concerns whether or not their apps have been ported or alternatives exist..or even if the new OS even supports that 1 feature that they got accustomed to using....many people chose to move on simply because they felt there comes a point where they felt its better to invest their time and money in an OS with a future rather then continue on a dead road...M$ still says they will support wm 6.5 for a bit..but at one point there will come an end...

[vonnieglen]

Originally Posted by gTen

um..ME has pretty much same hardware requirements as XP..

ME
minimum: 150mhz and 32mb ram
recommended: 300mhz and 64mb ram

XP
minimum: 233mhz and 64mb ram
recommended: 300mhz and 128mb ram

I am not quite sure why this issue is so important to you. I concede that there were a few problems as there are with any new OS. The issue with upgrading hardware between ME and XP had absolutely nothing to do with the minimum processor and memory requirements. Your comparison is meaningless. XP basically required all new drivers while ME used Win98 drivers. Your statement that the only way to fix ME was to upgrade to XP is just silly; much of the hardware that would run fine on ME never had XP drivers made available.

I am sorry that you had such a difficult time with ME. Personally I continued to run Win98 SE on most of my machines because I was into video capture and editing at the time and needed to squeeze the most out of my hardware. I did buy a copy however and I also worked on many machines which had it installed. ME was the last of the hybrid 16bit/32bit operating systems. I had no real issues with it. Windows 2000 came out shortly afterwards and then XP... so of course Microsoft basically cut development off before all of the bugs were worked out. I don't know about MS Paint... but I had no issues running Photoshop on ME. My feeling has always been that it was a much maligned OS. But it is all ancient history now.

I did find out that at the end of the month Sprint is going to be tacking an additional $10 to every new smart phone added to your account. These are defined as “a device that supports a robust operating system including: Android, BlackBerry, Instinct, Palm and Windows Mobile.” I am very glad my two TP2s will be here before the end of the month. I think I will go ahead and keep my PPC-6700 active and dump my A-900 and A-920 phones.

"For those of you that already have 3G phones on the Sprint network, fret not (or at least not yet), as you won’t be dinged with the new charge unless you either upgrade your existing smartphone or activate a new smartphone on your existing account. If and when you do decide to upgrade or change your plan, however, even those of you that aren’t packing the latest 4G phones will still have to pony up another $10 bucks a month."

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/sprint-4g-data-plan/

[gTen]

Originally Posted by vonnieglen

I am not quite sure why this issue is so important to you. I concede that there were a few problems as there are with any new OS. The issue with upgrading hardware between ME and XP had absolutely nothing to do with the minimum processor and memory requirements. Your comparison is meaningless. XP basically required all new drivers while ME used Win98 drivers. Your statement that the only way to fix ME was to upgrade to XP is just silly; much of the hardware that would run fine on ME never had XP drivers made available.

I am sorry that you had such a difficult time with ME. Personally I continued to run Win98 SE on most of my machines because I was into video capture and editing at the time and needed to squeeze the most out of my hardware. I did buy a copy however and I also worked on many machines which had it installed. ME was the last of the hybrid 16bit/32bit operating systems. I had no real issues with it. Windows 2000 came out shortly afterwards and then XP... so of course Microsoft basically cut development off before all of the bugs were worked out. I don't know about MS Paint... but I had no issues running Photoshop on ME. My feeling has always been that it was a much maligned OS. But it is all ancient history now.

Yes photoshop ran fine..Paint did not ...its kinda a mental trauma with me an ME >.> lol anyways...

I did find out that at the end of the month Sprint is going to be tacking an additional $10 to every new smart phone added to your account. These are defined as “a device that supports a robust operating system including: Android, BlackBerry, Instinct, Palm and Windows Mobile.” I am very glad my two TP2s will be here before the end of the month. I think I will go ahead and keep my PPC-6700 active and dump my A-900 and A-920 phones.

"For those of you that already have 3G phones on the Sprint network, fret not (or at least not yet), as you won’t be dinged with the new charge unless you either upgrade your existing smartphone or activate a new smartphone on your existing account. If and when you do decide to upgrade or change your plan, however, even those of you that aren’t packing the latest 4G phones will still have to pony up another $10 bucks a month."

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/sprint-4g-data-plan/

I do not think these premium data plans are ment for old plans...because if they allow premium data plans on old lines then people would be able to get new phones on old plans...which Sprint does not want either...hence I don't think old plans will be effected by the $10 fee smartphone or not...(Then again only option for smartphone is windows mobile lol)

[vonnieglen]

[QUOTE=gTen;2044938]Yes photoshop ran fine..Paint did not ...its kinda a mental trauma with me an ME >.> lol anyways... QUOTE]

It is very frustrating when you buy a product that does not deliver. I know others who were unhappy with ME. Some advertised features such as system restore didn't really start working well until after they matured in XP. Thinking about it... there are some parallels between ME and the TP2. ME was basically an orphaned OS just as WM 6.5 currently is. And I am sorry for getting a little confused as to who said what in the discussion.

I am not sure about the new $10/month fee that will be assessed by Sprint on all new phone activations for devices with a "robust operating system". I suppose it makes sense on many levels. I am just gald that I probably will not have to pay the new fee anytime soon. But it will be a strong incentive to keep the TP2s for a very long time. I should probably thank someone at Sprint for this altruistic effort to keep my ETF (Electronic Trinket Fever) in check for the next couple of years.