I'm back again after having spent more than a month a lot of the time on Win7 (before, I would log on occasionally, just to upload to OneDrive)...
So, I must say, XP continues to impress me and win me over.
Also, if any Microsoft OS developer is reading this, here are my rants on why XP is still The King:
1. Lag during video playback in Windows 7. I know it's not the HDD's fault b/c it was just a small video file (<1GB). Either it's the inherrent system bloat or the DRM mechanism (ie. all audiovisuals must pass thru the built in "protected video path" filter) that is the major cause of lag.
2. Too much eye candy. By default I've always been wary of "ultra pretty" things. Like ultra pretty women are more trouble than they're worth. Heck, real beauty is more than just skin/GUI deep. I simply can't stand the too much eye candy of Windows 7's GUI. Heck, even after I turn off all the Aero and tweaked the GUI to look as much like XP as I can, I still can't stand the sugary sweetness in-your-face eye candy of Windows7. It gives me a mental toothache just looking at Win7's interface too much. XP manages to strike the proper balance between looking good and ready for serious business. (As a side note, Win8/10 manages to do just the complete opposite --- looking as ugly and bland as possible. Ugly and ultra pretty, they're both the same thing!)
3. System lag. I want quick response for everything. All GUI operations in Windows 7 take 3x longer than in XP. Every tenths or hundredths of milliseconds count for me in being a happy user, vs a p1ssed off one!
4. Wow, I can't play 12 year-old games on Windows 7 on what appears to be at the most 10fps on Windows 7, but the same games in XP on the latest DirectX (9.0c) for it runs circles around Win7. This is not really excusable for older laptops b/c performance should lag by no more than 50% on a newer OS on old hardware, not 75% or 80%!
5. Random screen scrambling in Windows 7. I know it's not my hardware nor driver. On my other laptop, which I purchased recently, I've encountered the same screen scrambling in, get this Windows 8.0. So, I know this scrambling is an OS/kernel issue b/c 7 and 8.0 share the same code base. I also know, the screen scrambling is part of the DRM mechanism (ie. protected video path) being accidentally tripped, which is why the mouse pointer looks suspiciously fine, while the rest of the screen looks like scrambled pay TV (when everything was still on analog signals). The only solution to stop the scrambling is a reboot. To me, this is even worse than a BSOD b/c you can still read the screen then. This move to implement such a mechanism in an OS really shows a business's dark side/ugly human nature. This is as equally ugly as another business move by a certain laptop manufacturer to only let you burn ONE SET of the system recovery discs while permanently deactivating such features afterwards. What if someone burnt a bad copy? They will be left with no recovery discs. So when I say implementing such things in software is ugly, I meant to say it makes the business entities that implement them reveal their inner ugliness and lack of basic charity/common courtesy... Now, why is screen scrambling ugly? What if you're running a time-critical task and you suddenly get screen scrambling. The system is essentially visually useless until you reboot, and that's losing valuable time. Also, what if you're running some math simulation that requires many hours to complete, and half way thru, the screen scrambles so you can't see the results on the screen? Then you gotta start over, which sucks. THIS IS MY BIGGEST GRIPE WITH WINDOWS 7/8.x. Sure Windows 7/8.x may lag in video playback and games. Sure the GUI and common tasks may be slow as hell compared to XP. But that don't make it a useless OS, until you add in random screen scrambling d/t DRM mechanism being accidentally tripped, and then you get PURE SUCKAGE!! Also, btw, how is screen scrambling supposed to stop piracy when most of the "ripping" is done by pros and perhaps people who formerly worked on such protection mechanisms and the common user simply points, clicks, and downloads them afterwards?
After the above rant, I feel so much better... Now the good parts about Windows 7.
1. It has IE11. It means I can access OneDrive without worrying about FireFox/Chrome/Opera/Safari secretly stealing my password/recoding my email address.
2. I can get 2.0MBytes/sec downloading stuff from Google Drive over Wi-Fi. Not 2.0Mbits/sec, but wholesome Bytes as in 8 bits = 1 Byte!
Ergo sum, I can't see myself continuing to support the Wintel ecosystem by purchasing Windows preloaded hardware in the future. But on the bright side, with my old and new laptops, both of which I feel can continue to do their job for another 5-15 years with maybe needing a few HDD replacements now and then, I would have no need to touch another Wintel product for a very long time anyways...