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This is the ULTIMATE productivity OS.
The workflow is just insane compared to other OS:es, WinXP may come close but many important software wouldnt work in XP, not to say XP GUI is bad or anything.

Win7 GUI is very nice and wont get away in your work. There also will not be annoying messages when you try to do something the OS doesnt want you to do.

Win7 is real fast if its timelocked into year 2013 (do not install anything from Microsoft after the year 2013, including updates)

These are the necessary parts:
-SP1 (should be on the DVD image already)

-Visual Studio 2008 (delete this after the install, the important thing is Windows 7 updates or new OS features it installs)
-Visual Studio 2010 (delete this after the install, the important thing is Windows 7 updates or new OS features it installs)
-Visual Studio 2012 (delete this after the install, the important thing is Windows 7 updates or new OS features it installs)
-Visual Studio 2013 (delete this after the install, the important thing is Windows 7 updates or new OS features it installs)

Now it should have .NET 3.5 with updates, .NET 4.0 with updates, .NET 4.5 (not up to date)
Visual C++ Redist 2008,2010,2012,2013

There is not much else that is absolutely required to run most Windows 64-bit software. Unless it's from the year 2015+ when it requires more shennanigans. 2018+ probably wont work in Win7 at all. But developers are at fault in here.

It may have been the beginning of the end for this product but this was the last damn good version of Windows.

It keeps getting worse, eventually people will begin accepting 10's privacy violations because 12 is THAT BAD.

Good thread, would like to see XP or 2000 next.

SEMI RELATED AUTISM WARNING'

i roll my eyes whenever I hear or see someone mentioning CVEs as if the mere existence of one will cause a magic witch doctor to appear in your living room and instantly compromise your machine in an undetectable way but in a way that will somehow ruin your life and make your computer useless is right there with them.

I mean fuck me I haven't even heard of someone getting a computer virus or fucked over from a vulnerability in like 10 years and if I did the chances are it would be their router that got fucked not their machine that is behind their router which has a built in firewall and port management. The only people who are bigger faggots than the "fruitiger aero win7" crowd are the people who are whining and crying about how insecure they are as if every iteration of windows hasn't been perpetually insecure from launch till EOL.

>as if every iteration of windows hasn't been perpetually insecure from launch till EOL.

exactly, those faggots won't be saved by windows 11 when one of their tranny friends has a melty and sends them a rat through discord, as it's always the case
KEK

I haven't used an antivirus on my outdated Windows 7 computer for years and I haven't had a single problem.

I do not torrent, because I have already torrented what I need to torrent.
I do not download "random" files from the Internet, because I have no serious reason to.
My computing is quite simple and I use it for straight forward tasks.

I risk nothing, and if something did get in without me downloading anything, it most likely would've taken thr existence of an antivirus into consideration and end up sneaking by, anyway!

I run Windows 10 without Windows defender and with disabled updates. My system is probably 4-5 years out of date. Nothing ever happens. I have another laptop connected to the internet with Windows XP SP3 and Supermium. It didn't get hacked either. These videos and articles about having a system hacked are fraudulent. They either downloaded the malware themselves or connected the computers directly to the internet.

XP after SP2 and especially at the end of its life with SP3 and when they STOPPED adding shit to it was the most solid-yet-out-of-the-way OS one can only dream of. It did exactly the things right that you wanted from a desktop OS: It booted, loaded the drivers, provided you a very basic GUI and then got out of your way for the rest of the day!

No onedrive. No "libraries". No app store. Nothing you could not remove with ntlite. Hell, my installation disk was 100mb at max and the thing idled at around the same amount of RAM with my X201 back in 2012 or something - while being FULLY functional as an OS.

Yes, with only very minor modifications to actually work with modern hardware ... I'd use it again.

WindowXP (2003):
> unified Explorer look

> whatever you have configured in Explorer will also work across file picker dialogs and such, like thumbnail mode, icon size etc

> per folder settings that are also unified for apps

> tons of nuanced sorting options like not just generic "Time" but Date modified, Date created, etc etc and this also is unified

LEENOOPS, 120 YEARS LATER:
> Absolute clusterfuck of DE state, bunch of intertwined GTK/QT dependencies being dragged regardless what you install

> Oh, you want thumbnails? Sure, you can have then... only in your favorite File manager app.

> Oh you want video thumnails outside of that app, in all kinds of dialogue windows? Oh, you ALSO want those dialogue windows to read your per folder settings that only your File manager abides? TOO BAD FAGGOT BETTET CODE IT YOURSELF AHAHA

> OH YOU WANT ADVANCED SORTING? WELL YOU KNOW WHAT IDE TO PICK UP NOW DO YOU?

Absolute state of poorfags. Took me 3 days of suffering to understand Windows 90% market share clearly.

true, I would use XP if it worked on anything newer than a gtx 980ti, but I am also afraid of being too used to Vista+ commodities to properly switch anyway.

Maybe we should have a little desktop thread here?

Windows is the easiest operating system to hack, any kiddie pentester knows this.
The "security" updates microsoft push barely make a difference. Using windows after support drops isn't that different.

XP is the point at which the code started to accrue damage. XP has a number of bad features. It was the start of the dumbing down of the UI. It introduced WinSxS which is an over complicated abomination which pretty much exists soully to support common controls v6, and common controls v6 exists to support theming, such a massive waste of dev effort that could have been put towards useful improvements. This is pretty much the theme of windows for the last 20 years, most dev effort has gone into fucking up the UI whilst ignoring much needed core improvements.

Big tech are shitting their pants because we are in a moment of computing anarchy. Airgapped and old computers are not useless, but don't take this as an excuse to keep really shitty hardware that can't be upgraded. Ivy bridge CPUs will always be viable for basic office tasks, if you can live with a machine that only runs W7 + MSO or W7(+) + VMware for that, then you literally never have to pay for office programs again. Print using XPS Writer, send that shit to Fax and Scan , and you'll end up with your documents as .tif that you can print using any other computer or a usb stick, I mention the .tif thing to dispel any excuses about non-existent printer drivers for older computers. If you have something wayy better than Ivy bridge, then there's a lot more you can do with VMware, but also have the office stuff accessible, since moderately old cpus struggle with software rendering if you are trying to do anything 3d/gaming related on a VM, unless you have the money for more robust virtualization/GPU passthrough.

I got a micro Dell years ago, it's tiny, only has 12GB of ram, but it's amazing because it runs W10 just fine, plus WXPro through VMware for all the office crap.

Even XP is viable for basic office tasks on an old computer, but there are more hoops to jump through to get .tif out, which is why I recommend generating an XPS files which the host (Windows Vista+ natively support it) can send to Fax and Scan for .tif output or direct printing.

Current VMware supports W8+, for W7 you have to hunt down older installers, if you are too lazy to do the workaround for installing W10 on prebuilts that don't support it. VMs generated by W10 are much smaller though, so I recommend you do the latter instead, as W7 fully updated + VMware + VM bloat well over 110GB if you are trying to do more than office tasks.

Hello from Windows 11 Professional! Eating 4 gigs of ram even though nothing is open. Why?

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HELLO FROM WINDOWS XP
MICROSOFT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MALICIOUS
NOT UPDATING EVER

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oh microsoft, what will you think of next?

help me to breathe.swf

Nice shit. Did you make that theme using ReactOS's theme utility?

Themes.zip

Microsoft can pry my Installation DVD out of my cold dead hands.

Windows feels cold, sterile, uncomfortable to use. It has a chaotic, angular design reminiscent of hostile architecture. Why did Microsoft abandon humanist design principles for their user interfaces?