James Connell wrote:
Paul J Gans wrote:
EGR wrote:
Hi all, I am wondering why Adobe chose to make their "Creative suite" run on Win 2000 or XP thus not permitting users like myself to upgrade because I am using Win. 98se. I suspect that this will cost them money in the long term because if people like myself wish to upgrade to Creative Suite they must also upgrade their operating systems too. I really can’t see their motive for such a stupid move. EGR
It has been said here many times before. There are significant internal differences between the Win9x (and WinME) series of operating systems and the WinNT series (Win2000, WinXP). These differences allow totally different programming
methods that allow a huge program like Photoshop to run
as quickly or more quickly than the previous version,
even though it contains more "stuff".
Just as new programs for users solve problems the users
were having, new operating systems solve problems for
programmers.
—- Paul J. Gans
yes but the win32 API is locked in, M$ can add to it but if they drop calls they lose backwards compatability, so far even the stuff i wrote to run in dos 3.1 still runs fine. you can change the functionality of a API call but still have it stay the same call it just works better – i’m curious has anybody Tried loading PS 8 ( i can’t stand this trend to ‘names’ for and upgade either 🙂 onto a win98 box to see if it’ll run?? after win 98 "replaced" win95 all the new software began saying for 98 and up but it ran under ’95 fine.
I agree with you. However there are *new* API routines that do things that were not done before.
XP runs programs in separate spaces. Thus an XP program can not interfere with another program running simultaneously. It cannot "use up" all the memory or hog the resources.
Under Win98 programs ran in the same space. They were supposed to cooperate. However, if one program hogged the memory, any others were simply screwed.
This is just one difference. It leads to different methods of programming. Threads are another. This is a technique that allows a program to start up a subprogram to do a "simultaneous" calculation. This ability was rudimentary in Win98 if it existed at all (I no longer recall). It is a major feature in XP. It also is helped by independent memory spaces for programs.
The list of such things is almost endless.
There is another point. Because the operating system model is totally different, using the old API amounts to running an emulator to recreate the old Win98 environment inside the new environment. It isn’t simply a matter of using the same API calls.
Let me give you an example of this. Back in the stone age of computing (before personal computers) it was common for a program to modify its own instructions as it ran. These self-modifying program were hell to debug, but they were the only efficient method to do many things.
As time went on computer hardware changed and so did the OS’s. Programs were loaded into memory space that was unwritable by anybody but the OS itself. That kept all sorts of "Oops, my program just overwrote yours" types of errors from occuring. It also meant that all the old programs had to be rewritten — or, in many cases, the old compilers had to be changed.
Sure, one could have written routines to make it possible for the old code to continue to run, but it would have done so far slower and at a competetive disadvantage relative to programs written for the new programming models.
That’s the sort of thing going on here.
—- Paul J. Gans
PS: Would it help if I told you that I feel your pain? I have an old portable that runs Win98 and I’m as screwed vis a vis that machine as everyone else with a Win98 machine.
