That's a bit of an unwarranted stab at microsoft.

Backwards compatibility is an exceptionally hard thing to get right.
The main reason windows is such unreliable bloatware is because it
retains backward compatibility for almost every API you can think of.

With 32 bit windows, some older APIs have been dropped, but these are
almost exclusively ones that really aren't that important - hence loss
of support for 16bit screen savers.

It's the same with IA32 (and even x64) processor architecture. Intels
chip designs would be much better if they dropped backwards
compatibility with legacy x86 architecture and made a new architecture
from scratch. They actually did this, and called it itanium. Sadly, it
didn't catch on.

On 27/10/06, Howard Winter <HDRW@h2org.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Alan,
>
> On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:16:10 +0100, Alan B. Pearce wrote:
>
> > >If it's an old 16bit screen saver (i.e. 16 bit code, not 16 bit colour
> > >depth!)
> > >then you are out of luck AFAIK, XP will not run these.
> >
> > OK, I believe at least one of the ones I was trying is 16 bit code. The one
> > I really wanted to run is probably 16 bit as well. Shame, but that is the
> > way things go I guess.
>
> No, it's the way Microsoft goes!  Backward compatibility used to be a big thing in computing, but M$ discovered that it means that people can just stay
> with what they have, rather than upgrading every couple of years, which reduces M$'s profits.  One of the many reasons that I don't use their
> software unless I have to (I do like their keyboards and mice, though!).
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Howard Winter
> St.Albans, England
>
>
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