How can you use such an operating system now

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    11110 months ago

    If only you knew how many critical systems are running old versions of Windows… It’s mind boggling

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    10410 months ago

    You laugh but the fact that you got a login confirmation notification means he got your password now. He’ll just need to guess your email password next and you’ll be truly owned. Set up 2fa on your email account if you haven’t set it up already.

  • Hellfire103
    link
    fedilink
    English
    4110 months ago

    In the UK, a lot of our government still uses XP and a lot of our public embedded devices (e.g. the tills in the Co-Op) run on Internet Explorer.

    Some random Thai hacker using 7 isn’t that much of a stretch.

      • Hellfire103
        link
        fedilink
        English
        510 months ago

        It’s a kind of shop. They do other things as well, but the shop is the most memorable. Co-Op is short for “Co-Operative”.

        They’re related to the Co-Op Party, which is part of the Labour party (a popular left-wing political party).

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          310 months ago

          That is… Not quite the same as I thought whenever I read that word. Around here, a co-op is a collective purchasing program or a store that participates in a similar program. They buy foods in bulk at wholesale prices. By bulk, I don’t mean the family size bags available at a membership club like Costco. I mean like a 100lb bag of flour meant for a restaurant or an entire pallet of something.

          A group of people get together and make note of what they want to buy, and if enough people want the same item it gets purchased. Then they all meet up on delivery day and split the item at the amounts they paid for.

          I’m assuming that is very different than what you are describing.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3310 months ago

    7!!! is a really high number, I doubt there will ever be that many versions of Windows

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      42
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Problem is it’s 3 years past EOL and hasn’t received any security updates in that time.

      It’s functional, just not secure.

      • JohnEdwa
        link
        fedilink
        12
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        There actually are updates to it as for the last three years Microsoft has continued to patch it under the commercial “Extended Security Update” program - that only ended in January 2023.
        You just couldn’t get them as a home user without doing a lot of tweaking on your own.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        610 months ago

        Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some compromised machine that someone else is controlling for illegal activities.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1910 months ago

        You know how when you press the Windows key and are able to type into the searchbar? Prior to 10, this bar did an instant local-only search of your desktop applications and (if you enabled it) select cached documents. Imagine building up the muscle memory of using this to launch applications for a decade or two to the point where you don’t even look at the screen anymore when launching apps. Now imagine that Windows 10 comes along and introduces a mandatory internet search that has to complete before it lets you see the local results that you were actually looking for.

        Now imagine not being able to forget how snappy it used to be every single time you launch an application. Imagine the annoyance of being punished for a typo by having Edge open up a Bing search instead of the application you were trying to launch. Imagine not noticing the error and waiting 5 seconds for Bing to boot up, only to be confusedly greeted by a search you didn’t ask for in a browser you wish you could uninstall. Imagine installing third-party applications to try and restore the old search experience only for it to get regularly broken by OS updates you cannot opt out of and are only sometimes notified of in advance (another “feature” that Windows 10 brought).

        IMO Windows 7 was the last “pure” Windows before the power balance at Microsoft tipped in favor of the cloud & sales people.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          610 months ago

          Woah man, why wouldn’t you want your computers key search features to just go straight to bing result? Are you using some kind of crazy computer that has things on physical memory? Fuck that put it all on the cloud man. It’s the future.

        • voxel
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -1
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          you can disable the web search, and it’s really snappy with ms web integration garbage.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            510 months ago

            You can disable searching as a fall-through, but you cannot disable web results appearing inside of the menu itself, which is what slows it down. At least, that was the case for the first 4 years or so before I stopped using Windows 10 and switched to Linux.

            • voxel
              link
              fedilink
              English
              4
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              you can fully disable all online/web search features in search using a group policy on Pro versions of windows. afaik there are even one click tools that can do that for you (pretty sure even good ol’ OOSU10 can do it)

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              210 months ago

              You can, and the search speed is much improved. I deployed that group policy to all my w10/11 boxes.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              110 months ago

              you can, it’s just harder to do. I suggest find a debloater tool, and use it. Also remove cortana thing to make it even faster. There are some tools that let’s you remove all WinRT apps

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                210 months ago

                … or I could just use dmenu on an OS that I don’t have to “debloat” to make useable?

        • VitalyOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1410 months ago

          Even my school in ukraine use to have better computers, where do you live?

          • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1510 months ago

            Slovakia. I mean, it’s not all of them. Most of it can even run Windows 7. Recently they put Windows 10 on some of them, but good luck even just trying to launch a browser.
            In June they already got rid of the last 32-bit machines.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              1910 months ago

              Schools often have very old computers but don’t let that discourage anyone. We had old Apple IIe’s in 1998 in my high school “computer literacy” class. I became a programmer in part because I was bored and learned BASIC on the Apple II’s and my TI-85 calculator also supported BASIC.

              Sometimes, a crappy computer teaches you more than a modern one. (Only if you want to be a programmer, though. Don’t learn Office 2000 because politicians in your country won’t budget for some cheap, modern laptops.)

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                410 months ago

                The TI83 Plus was my gateway drug. Learning BASIC and the fundamentals behind connecting it to my computer. Emulating software to test code on different models. It was fascinating and engaging. The fun and learning involved with doing anything and everything you can with the technology that’s available to you is something that I think is lost for a depressing majority of youth now.

              • genoxidedev1
                link
                fedilink
                210 months ago

                I think putting up with the “crappiness” of a system is a very good test to see if someone will become more tech affinitive or not.

                Most users would never put up with that unless they don’t know any better and don’t mind that it takes a bit longer.

                Not to downplay anyone that’s not as good with tech though, by the way, if anyone read it that way.

                • Teppic
                  link
                  fedilink
                  110 months ago

                  Not sure, it just taught me to write really efficient code!

      • Bipta
        link
        fedilink
        110 months ago

        I still did until last year. It’s probably still the best operating system ever made.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          210 months ago

          I had to upgrade 4 years ago when I bought new hardware and went to 10 and now 11. I still miss 7, it was insanely more performant and feature complete. From a UI point of view, anyway.

  • ares35
    link
    fedilink
    1510 months ago

    could just be the custom user-agent string configured in whatever browser or script they’re running.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1510 months ago

    I’m using a Win7 machine at work, because I have to support a system that saw it’s last update in 2014. There is actually a Win10 compatible version of this software, but it only supports maybe a third of the chips of the original software, and sadly the ones we use are not among those.

    And it can get worse. I’ve got an oscilloscope that “runs” under a heavily modified version of Win98…

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        310 months ago

        Just to be the devil’s advocate here, you can make the same mistake with embedded Linux.

        Any old software should not be in the network.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      210 months ago

      Assuming it is not on the network, I don’t care what OS it runs. I’d like to see if I could run your OS on a virtual machine and give access to the hardware.

      Does your scope give good resolution? How does it compare?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        310 months ago

        The scope is an old 4-Channel digital scope from HP (now Agilent). It cost about a fortune when it was bought, and now I got my hands on it for a (small) donation in the barbeque fund. It needs some work (some dials’ contacts need rework, and it definitly needs a new fan that does not sound like a starting plane. But otherwise, it is still good.

        It only was retired because for our next project, 2GS won’t cut it. And the amount of samples it could store was not much (for our needs), too. Still overkill for my private projects, with the bonus that I don’t need to dig through manuals, as I know this thing inside out.

    • Flying Squid
      link
      fedilink
      English
      110 months ago

      Reminds me of a recording studio I used to work at which had an MS-DOS machine long after Windows XP came out because it was what we printed cassette labels on. With a dot matrix printer.

  • sebinspace
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1310 months ago

    A lot of legacy equipment still uses 98/XP machines because it literally just needs to work.