Rescued this old Packard Bell CRT monitor from a local recycling centre last night. 😁

Here it is now that I got it set up with my Packard Bell computers. 😁

I tested it out as soon as it warmed up to room temp and all the condensation had dried off. It seems it only really likes to run at 640x480 or lower resolutions. Other Packard Bell enthusiasts have informed me that it is a rebadged Tatung monitor from 1994.

I uh............... replaced Win7 system icons with Win2000's

and also tried to adjust icon margins and things like that. I'd better soak up all the classic mode fun while I still can

The only method I found to work was to use that somewhat scummy (AskJeeves installer and phones home when you run it? Requiring email address to even SAVE a theme? Themes exported are EXE FILES?! ew!) CustoPack program that fell off the internet, since the registry and even resource hacking HOWTO's did not work.

also for kicks... using WinZIP 7 icons for all archives 🤣

I found that no matter what I did, Win 7 still looked ugly as shit, and unfortunately adding more graphics just made the performance worse, something no amount of gray windows could cover up.

I just gave up in the end.

Same here, Windows 7 is just a slightly better reskinned version of Vista. Everything after XP has been total crap. 😒

Perhaps not totally retro but definitely something to remember with all old (and sometimes new) computer gear. You can never be sure that it follows the specification.

I have used a MSI P35 motherboard with an overclocked Core 2 Quad to test video cards. Over the weekend I have been playing GTA IV using the system with a Geforce 8800 GTX. GTA IV has loaded the system to 100% constantly for hours, it was fine the first 12 hours or so but then the game started crashing. It took me a while to realize that it was the crappy Samsung DDR2 memory that wasnt stable at 800 MHz 4-4-4-12-30 2-4-3-2 @2.1V any more although it was Prime "Blend" stable earlier. I have never seen DDR2 degrade at only 2.1V before so I used a multimeter to check the DDR2 voltage. The board overvolts the memory 0.28 volts, 2.1V was 2.38V and 1.8V was 2.08V.

You live and learn, the memory still works at "SPD" 5,6,6,19,42 timings at 1.8V... ehm 2.08V but I need to replace the degraded memory with some memory that can run at the tighter timings so my video card benching stay consistent.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Rescued this old Packard Bell CRT monitor from a local recycling centre last night. 😁

Awesome! 😳

Lol Don't worry it wasn't any sort of covert Ops mission or anything. 😜

It was just sitting in a bunch of junk that people dropped off in front of the building after they had closed up for the night. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Same here, Windows 7 is just a slightly better reskinned version of Vista. Everything after XP has been total crap. 😒

Neither Visa nor 7 is bad if you have the hardware to back it up.

8+ on the other hand is a steaming pile of crap

Then windows 10 would be crap too, because its based on the same windows 8 engine..

Robin4 wrote:

Then windows 10 would be crap too, because its based on the same windows 8 engine..

Hence "8+"

At least they brought the start menu back but still it is ugly and not really designed as a desktop OS

smeezekitty wrote:

Robin4 wrote:

Then windows 10 would be crap too, because its based on the same windows 8 engine..

Hence "8+"

At least they brought the start menu back but still it is ugly and not really designed as a desktop OS

Did you already have seen how they modified that startmenu with A B C D E ect.. In my eyes its just annoying how it is now..
Also the installed folders are arranged by the same alphabet.. And are put between the apps.. which makes it more confusing.

You can complain because there is no startmenu in windows 8.(1) but that is easy to fix with classic shell..
I think it will be harder on windows 10 to set it to the right startmenu how you want it.. Personal i prefer windows 8.1 over windows 10.. Telling that it only can be much worse that it was..

In my mind the Win7 start menu was broken and I never figured out how to use it.

I liked Metro, no more cluttered desktop, no more start menu bigger than the screen and easily navigated with a keyboard. I did hate it at first, however.

I got a Windows 95 vibe from Win8, it was a transitional OS, a move into the new era. Far from perfect, but necessary. Windows 10 will therefore be Windows 98; it won't work and they'll have to release a Second Edition that people will install on EVERYTHING. Hey, why's this 486SX-25 so slow? Oh wait, you installed Windows 98... err... Windows 10 on it.

Then people will get needlessly defensive of it "It's NOT windows, you're wrong, you don't know what you're talking about, you're a fucking idiot!" - I got tired of this in the Win98 era. I had this lecture from a guy who had somehow got Windows 98 running on his 386 - don't ask me how - and it was of course the fault of the computer system for not working well and I was a "fucking idiot" for telling him to install something else, like DOS, or get a new computer. Used to be a lot of people like that, they were the real idiots though and I used to bill them for shit I hadn't even installed because I wasn't allowed to argue with them. Oh, well, it paid for upgrades on my machine anyway.

Windows 10 preview user and former 8.1 user here: I actually like Win8+ better than 7. I hated Aero, but like the cleaner theme Windows 8 uses, and it performs decently well even with the generic SVGA driver (unlike Aero, that gets disabled with a non DX9 gpu), and several system tools are greatly improved. The new task manager is a blessing, for example. The Windows+X context menu provides a shortcut to a lot of useful utilities (admin prompt, control panel, etc.). If you can get past some UI inconsistencies it is a nice system to work with. And Win10 is shaping up to be even better, as they seem to be giving greater focus to non-touch users. After getting used to it Win8 feels like a stepping stone towards 10.

IMHO I doubt the Win98 problem will repeat itself (people ironing it on hardware even 3.11 wasn't all that comfortable). After the Vista fiasco MS seems to have learned the importance of code optimization.

My retro-ish pursuits lately:

I finally got round to installing some gog games on my windows 7 box. With universal alchemy they all run environmental effects - i have a xonar soundcard which despite what i saw on the web, does not naturally support eax to the extent that games can detect it, but the creative unviersal alchemy fixes that problem.

A few days ago I dismantled my p4 isa box and found a bulging cap near the cpu 😵. Bah, old hardware. Will really have to learn to solder.

The p4 was dismantled because I needed the case for a linux gpu setup - i got an nvidia m1060 new-old-stock cheap [pretty retro as tesla cards go 🤣] so I have that and a gtx570gs together in there - the 5 series are I think the last consumer cards without too severely crippled double precision calculations. Linux drivers appear to be installed enough to run cuda examples. Mandlebrot rendering is a good example of how far computers have come in the last 30 years. Back in 1986 my old z80-based amstrad cpc464 took a few hours to render a single mandlebrot image, line by line at whatever the resolution was [low, anyway]. The nvidia demo seems to run at 1200fps.

alexanrs wrote:

Windows 10 preview user and former 8.1 user here: I actually like Win8+ better than 7. I hated Aero, but like the cleaner theme Windows 8 uses, and it performs decently well even with the generic SVGA driver (unlike Aero, that gets disabled with a non DX9 gpu), and several system tools are greatly improved. The new task manager is a blessing, for example. The Windows+X context menu provides a shortcut to a lot of useful utilities (admin prompt, control panel, etc.). If you can get past some UI inconsistencies it is a nice system to work with. And Win10 is shaping up to be even better, as they seem to be giving greater focus to non-touch users. After getting used to it Win8 feels like a stepping stone towards 10.

I personally don't get the Aero hate. I like it. Regardless, it is not a big deal to turn it off on Windows Vista and 7.

I cannot stand the flat theme on in 8/10. It is horrendously ugly. It looks like something a computer with an EGA card could display.
No color dynamics. No nothing. Just flat and ugly like Windows 2.0. Going backwards it seems.

I do agree about the task manager. It is a welcome addition.

The problem with 8 is that it isn't obvious to a Vista / 7 user. I was at a store that was selling Windows 8.1 laptops
and I tried it and immediately despised it. It is extremely non-intuitive. Even most Linux distros are more obvious to me at least.

smeezekitty wrote:

I personally don't get the Aero hate. I like it. Regardless, it is not a big deal to turn it off on Windows Vista and 7. […]
Show full quote

I personally don't get the Aero hate. I like it. Regardless, it is not a big deal to turn it off on Windows Vista and 7.

I cannot stand the flat theme on in 8/10. It is horrendously ugly. It looks like something a computer with an EGA card could display.
No color dynamics. No nothing. Just flat and ugly like Windows 2.0. Going backwards it seems.

I do agree about the task manager. It is a welcome addition.

The problem with 8 is that it isn't obvious to a Vista / 7 user. I was at a store that was selling Windows 8.1 laptops
and I tried it and immediately despised it. It is extremely non-intuitive. Even most Linux distros are more obvious to me at least.

I force myself to run the latest version of Windows that my main rig can handle well. Given how fast technology can evolve, I try to stay current to not be "left behind". Also, I enjoy the learning curve. When people get mad for not knowing how to do stuff they knew on the previous version, I take that as a challenge. So I guess I'm the kind of user who is more likely to get past weird UI changes and focus on the good characteristics of the system. MS did address a number of UI issues on 8.1, and a few more on 8,1 update 1, making the experience somewhat more intuitive.

About the theme... well, I have weird tastes. I'm that guy that searched on Google a way to replace Luna with a 3.11-ish theme back in the XP era xD. I like things kindda flat and simple. I found XP's Luna too cartoony, Vista and Seven's Aero too flashy and distracting. The theme in Windows 8 seems, to me at least, cleaner and more functional. Though I think that sometimes MS should give the user more choices (allowing Aero there as an option) and, and that would probably mitigate a lot of the backlash they get whenever they change something.

Though I think that sometimes MS should give the user more choices (allowing Aero there as an option) and, and that would probably mitigate a lot of the backlash they get whenever they change something.

Absolutely. Give the user a choice on what they want on the UI and you will make most people happy.

*mentions icon replacing
*watch it snowball to OS debates

I wonder if i'll get the same for wanting to use an IE4/6 or Netscape 4 theme on a Mozilla-based browser to complete the period look. The ones that were made for Firefox were regressed a very long time ago (around 3.0) and no new ones were made

It would be nice if MS allowed for installations of different Desktop environments like Linux does. But then again they would either have to allow for people to have access to their code OR spend a lot of dev time building all these other DEs.