Why on earth would you measure the boot speed of a computer as some sort of useful statistic? It just so happens that XP boots faster and shuts down slower than 98, so what. Once it is up and running, for some things XP will be faster, and for others it will be slower. The general user interface (desktop) is significantly slower, because Microsoft wanted to make it prettier.
As for backward compatibility, that has been the cornerstone of the entire PC market since the beginning. Before the PC, new models of computers were rarely compatible with older models, and consumers were forced to get new software every time they got a new computer. Backwards compatibility is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to many people. Sure it doesn’t make much difference if all you do is surf the net, but there are a lot more uses for a computer than that. I have a circuit board design package. Upgrading it to the XP version would cost me about $10,000. Maybe you have that kind of money just laying around to toss into the wind, but I don’t.
Just to make it absolutely clear, we’re not talking about something difficult, like playing an 8 track in a CD player. What we are talking about is something that microsoft INTENTIONALLY did not do, when it was very easy for them to do so. Microsoft’s policy has always been to make the operating system “better” in their minds when faced with a choice of breaking backwards compatibility. For the same amount of effort on their part, they could have chosen the other path. Because of this, XP won’t run about half of the programs that I use.
It’s not like trying to run an 8 track in a CD player. It’s more like you being forced to rewire your house because they are making improvements to the power grid, or being forced to buy a new telephone every 10 years. It is far from impossible for Microsoft to maintain backwards compatibility. They simply chose not to.
People in glass houses…