No, Bill, there was MS-DOS version 1. It shipped with the original
IBM-PC (version 2 shipped with the PC-XT, and introduced support for
hard drives and folders).

Re: XP SP2 vs. SP3; there is almost no OBVIOUS difference. But there
are a lot of internal differences, almost all of them related to
security. SP3 is simply the collection of all of the security updates
that occurred over a roughly 3 year period. It plugs a lot of holes,
but makes very few outward changes. If you had run "windows upgrade"
religiously, you have most of it. But are you SURE that you didn't miss
anything?

Microsoft has imposed some limits on the "power" of a system for it to
be eligible for a "netbook" OS. I don't think that 1GB max memory is
one of those limits; I recall that a 12" or smaller screen size was one
of them. I have seen the list, and it's available online but I don't
remember all of it's items.


BillW50 wrote:
> In news:Xns9C37EF8E0EF58noonehomecom@74.209.131.13,
> Larry typed on Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:32:58 +0000:
>> I don't distaste Windows. I've been using Micro$oft's products since
>> DOS 1.0 was released on 8086 hardware!
>
> I don't remember any DOS v1.0 except QDOS v1.0. And Tim Patterson wrote
> it because Gary Kildall failed to write CP/M-86 like he promised he
> would. Gary did what he wanted, not what others wanted. Which later
> destroyed him.
>
>> I'm using WinXPSP3 typing this message because it's convenient and
>> familiar with Xnews, a very old usenet client.
>
> I have one machine running XPSP3 and the rest running XPSP2. And I
> haven't seen any difference in stability or usability between SP2 and
> SP3.
>
>> I'm sorry you got that impression that my post placing the 1GB limit
>> on Micro$oft was simply reporting all the thousands of articles
>> written on the subject.
>
> It is truly rare for any of my XP machines to ever need 900MB of more of
> memory for the OS and all of my running applications. Windows 2000 uses
> half of this figure.
>
> And I have a hard time believing that Microsoft made such a rule. As
> what would stop manufactures from taking Vista laptops and dropping the
> RAM down to 1GB and then asking Microsoft for XP licenses so they could
> sell more computers because people wanted XP instead of Vista?
>
>> One of my friends wants to install Win7 on his box. I've asked him
>> to wait until 2010 for SP2 or 3 until a significant number of major
>> bugs users find are ironed out. He failed to listen and upgraded to
>> Vista 1.0 on day one, paying dearly for his transgression.....(c;]
>
> That is always the smart move on your main machine anyway. Spare
> machines you can do whatever you want to since it doesn't matter if they
> work or not.
>
>> I missed several horrible "upgrades" like ME, Vista, some NT flavors
>> here. I've never been much of a "retail beta tester" for any
>> software.....
>
> I used to in the 80's, but it got old very quickly. Now I let the young
> kids to be the guinea pigs. <grin>
>
>> WinXPSP3 is a very stable product. I just wish its company wasn't so
>> hell bent on destroying it.
>
> It doesn't matter what Microsoft wants to do with it. They are still
> licensing new copies today because they didn't have a choice. It isn't
> because they want too. Now I see Windows 7 has a XP compatibility mode.
> Which will just cause XP to live out a much longer lifespan of any OS
> before or after it. <grin>
>