I know it's not exactly the point of the article but for a lot of things, I reckon a good amount of 'innovation' was pretty pointless. I personally don't think I ever needed anything that Office 2003 can't do... (Of course I don't use any MS office to begin with but you get the point)

Those screens can easily run on an integrated Raspberry Pi microcontroller, they dont exactly have complex graphics

How else are you gonna show ads?

https://www.fedoraproject.org/
https://linuxmint.com/
https://archlinux.org/
https://www.debian.org/
https://elementary.io/
https://system76.com/pop/

There are many safe open source options. If you need help there are ample resources available. If you want to you can also DM me.

We are far away from the release of the Raspberry Pi if that screen is running an early version of Windows CE. Putting a PC in the elevator to drive the screen was probably the most cost effective solution.

I'd like a law that software / hardware companies who file for bankruptcies must release the source / files for their tech to an open source repository.

Was but theres no reason to keep doing that

there's a word for those people: awesome

windows xp was peak; running anything before xp is legendary

I was tearing out ancient infrastructure for a new office and my eye kept going to a rectangular square box on the wall. Finally realized it was a PC! The cause of death was clear, PSU fan died, killed itself from heat. It was a form factor I had never seen, but standard nonetheless. It was running an answering machine system in DOS, still worked! Such a rare machine I've only found a single reference on the web and a single video about it. 1999, 486XS (I know, would kill for a DX, it's soldered on), upgraded from 2x 2MB SIMMs to a whopping 2x 64MB SIMMs. Imagine what that would have cost in the day!

LONG story, but I got it running Windows 95b. 3.1 was just too much challenge to get it networked and happy. Much pain was removed when I got a USB floppy emulator. Can't do jack without a floppy! Broke the network card drivers, need to start over. Had it running Doom with a legit SoundBlaster card and could RDP into over the network.

It was an amazing journey getting it all together and updated. Most of that knowledge is gone from the internet, and I sure don't remember all the tricks. Going to be my first token ring machine! LOL, had to get parts from Romania and trash cans.

I ran Linux 1994ish. Amiga OS before. Amstrad CPC 464 before. A friend ran Sinclair ZX-80, that was the first system I had access to.

It really depends what its used for.

Anything that is public facing would never work without constant maintenance and upgrades, be it a computer OS or some complex piece of hardware.

"stuck" more like happy to not have to deal with the last 15-ish years of microsoft ruining everything they previously excelled at.

Idk, it was horrendously insecure, would freeze a lot, and missing creature comforts like window tiling.

Tbh I think you're letting nostalgia blind you to XP's flaws a little.

If they kept refining Win7 it would've been great.

I know it's not exactly the point of the article but for a lot of things, I reckon a good amount of 'innovation' was pretty pointless. I personally don't think I ever needed anything that Office 2003 can't do... (Of course I don't use any MS office to begin with but you get the point)

Why not? Still using Windows 7 on one of my ThinkPads. It's a solid system, if you know what you're doing and how to use is safely.

Never thought I'd miss Ballmer, but here we are.

aside from radio shack and texas instruments that i used at camp, i think i was sadly too young to do anything but windows 3.1 our first computer was a tandy sensation in the early 90s and i didn't really play with linux until maybe the mid 2000s

except for playing with apple IIe and radio shack computers through school and camp, that is.