are facebook & microsoft in cahoots together??

[mom-from-missouri]

OK. I have been using facebook a lot lately----a whole lot. I am on my class reunion steering committee, and most everyone in our class has facebook. It has been a great way to plan, get updates on people, for me to collect photos for the powerpoint I am doing, and it is cutting our face to face meetings down to about half. And, its FREE--where as you pay for classmates.com and the others.

So, everything is working great, and now FB changes their format AGAIN. Now, I cant post, add friends or use my message box. I sent a note to FB, and their reply is that now requires a newer system than what I have (which is windows 98 on this computer--my one with xp crashed a couple weeks ago).

So, to use FB, I now have to upgrade.

This is a rip.

Yes, I am venting......and now I feel a little better...(no, not really, I am still mad...)

[disneysteve]

I knew they had changed the format yet again. I hadn't heard that it wasn't compatible with older operating systems. That's lousy. They should maintain some way for folks to use the service, considering how wildly popular it is, without having to go out and buy a new computer.

[jIM_Ohio]

I have windows 7 at home and everything is broke
bought new PC for xmas and XP was not an option
I am switching to apple

the windows 98 to XP requirement probably has more to do with the programming (.NET framework, java, or similar) used to run the web page.

[ActYourWage]

In the web world, the way technologies with software/hardware are moving at such a rapid pace in change, there is no way that software can always be backwards compatible. A windows 98 machine is a very old machine in the computer world, an upgrade is needed. Plus, FB is free, why should they worry about meeting old computer needs. This is very common in the computer world (think Microsoft). People are still going to use those products.

[PaydayLoner]

I was using Windows 98 up until last year, and it seemed to be running worse, showing fewer things on web pages, and just generally not working very well anymore. It used to work okay, even if it couldn't do everything. My old computer finally died and I had to get a new one and it had Windows XP, and now everything works.

But it really does look like systems become so incompatible after a while that you just can't keep them any more, even if you don't mind doing without some features. It's just a more gradual process than going from vinyl to cassettes to CDs.

[PrincessPerky]

Win98 is 12 years old....

In the computing world thats like complaining you cant watch movies because they don't come out on reel to reel anymore.

Though go right ahead and vent. It IS frustrating how tech keeps changing to newer versions and drags us all with it. Newer versions aren't really better for the average consumer, maybe a bit faster and have 'modern look' but no better.

Though being married to a tech geek I couldn't imagine not having the latest operating system on at least one computer!

[mom-from-missouri]

i think ur addicted to faceboook.

Not hardly. I am on it daily to update the reunion info and to check for photos people have posted, so I can download those for the reunion photo show. Maybe 30 minutes a day, or less if nothing is posted.

All of my friends on it are either family, church or highschool. I think after the reunion a lot of the highschool ones will drop off.

It works better than outlook mail if you have dialup (as I do). I don't have to wait for photos to load, and I can even go to the library to put them on cd. It also sends out messages to the entire group at once.

I don't think 30 minutes a day is addictive (I am often on savingadvice more than that), although 30 minutes is a lot for me, it is still better than driving 2 hours once a week for our planning meetings, and much cheaper on the gasoline! I'd be on it less if I didn't have a very slow dial up!

[disneysteve]

i think ur addicted to faceboook.

Not hardly.

mom, pay no attention to that comment. If you scan the forums, you'll see that this is a new poster who is posting either nonsense comments or somewhat inflammatory comments to a slew of threads. I've already reported it to Jeffrey.