I have the latest version of Windows, numero 7.
And it still freezes and bugs out. So why are we so accepting of this? It's almost expected that this operating system should crap out. Let's compare the common garden PC to other electronic devices.
Say you TV was like windows and just froze the screen right in the middle of your favourite TV show? You would be cursing and swearing at this piece of shit.
Say your refridgerator crapped out and went offline, your food would defrost and spoil and you would lose a lot of money in spoilt food.
Say you had a stereo system that suddenly froze in the middle of your favourite track, and you couldn't even get the CD out without pulling the power cord. It would be a piece of shit.
Say your electric oven only worked some of the time. You would miss meals because of this piece of shit.
Say your car was like Windows and on random days you couldn't even get the engine started to go to work. Or imagine if your car crapped out mid-way through a journey?
Say you had a lamp as your only lightsource in your lounge and it just cut out mid-evening, leaving you in darkness.
I can only come to the conclusion that operating systems are unreliable compared to other products and I would rather have something be 100% stable than have something that tries to do more than it can cope with.
Have you ever noticed that when you buy a new PC it runs fine? Then a few months in as Windows starts applying more and more of its updates, it gets slower and slower and more buggy?
This is annoying.
No, I don't recall the last time I've had my system freeze, but I do recall going over a month without restarting.
There are three things to note:
I have what you need:
Regarding W7, I really don't know what to tell you. I haven't had any trouble with the OS at all. I'm very pleased with it and I skipped to 7 from XP, which also was a very stable OS.
A lot of the reason ones computer slows down over time is because of all the crap we like to install on it. We clutter it up with all sorts fo stuff, knowingly or not.
If your computer is shared, then it gets completely out of control, because you get all sorts of malware that perhaps you yourself would know to avoid.
I don't like Vista, it is a failure on many, many levels compared to W7, XP or Ubuntu, but like Yoda said, it's an incredibly complicated and robust bit of software.
My car is a lot less complicated than my OS, it was also a lot more expensive and it is no where near as reliable as my computers.
Which is why I reinstall my OS at least once a year.
That, and things are slow and tend to temporarily stop responding for 10-15 seconds if I open them right after the computer has started up. And Windows Media Player often just decides not to work and takes a minute to open a video. Other than that... no issues.
And the graphics may be downgraded, but you can still play Zork.
You know the craptacular vista laptop I upgraded to windows 7? For the first few weeks it worked fine, then the problems began again. I don't install much shit at all and I always update and run Antivirus and spyware removers.