In just under a year the venerable Windows XP OS will hit end of life and will no longer be supported by Microsoft. This could be a rather unpleasant experience for many businesses that still rely on WinXP to provide compatibility for legacy applications. Windows 7 is becoming more difficult to acquire, with Microsoft pushing Win8 as their preferred product to sell with systems and introducing Win7 to executives is daunting enough without trying to explain why their Win8 computer now looks more like a cell phone. That is bad enough, but explaining to them why a custom built peice of software will no longer function due to incompatibility will be even worse and pointing out that the issue could have been prevented if they had only approved your budget requests to upgrade the software will be less than helpful. Your younger users will never notice, they are far more concerned with convincing someone that they should be allowed to work on whatever device is their current favourite but you can be guaranteed you will be spending time with upper management explaining why Microsoft doesn't care that they don't want to switch OSes and that due to security agreements with clients those managers have no choice but to upgrade. The Register put together some numbers showing how unprepared the UK market is; the situation in North America will be similar.
"The lack of a business case was cited as the key barrier to Windows XP application migration in 79 per cent of these organisations. This is why large volumes of unsupported applications post-Windows XP are a concern for 80 per cent of CIOs and IT leaders."
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Ditch it people for something
Ditch it people for something modern, something inspiring, something easy to use, versatile and all Yours to use as You want… No I don’t mean Windows 8, I mean Manjaro, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, CentOS and many more beautiful OSes out there.
I’ll be on Windows XP (SP3)
I’ll be on Windows XP (SP3) when it “dies”. It will be living/dead on my AthlonXP 3000+ system with it’s 1 gig of DDR 800 DRAM, AGP 7600GS graphics, and PATA 80 gig hard drive.
Our TVs are 25+ year old analog CRT relics of the past as well, with those coupon-special converter boxes. My personal TV even has the rotary mechanical tuner dial. No cell-phones of smart or dumb varieties either.
My car is in deadly need of electrical system work, which I am putting off because I can’t afford it, so I don’t think I’ll be spending money any time soon on items that still work for me, no matter how “dead” they get declared.
Windows XP is not dead, it
Windows XP is not dead, it just will not be a good idea to take it online when there will no longer be any security updates! I still have an old XP laptop, I guess I’ll dual boot Linux on it along with XP, but the XP laptop will not be driectly online after XP’s EOL! Want to talk about dead, Windows 8 arrived, stillborn, and I will never run it, online or off!
Any applications that require
Any applications that require XP can be run in a VM where any nasty bugs can only harm the VM, easily fixed by loading a new VM instance from an clean image! The real security for most enterprises is in the VM hyporvisor and NetWare/Adimins , and not windows of any version!
Windows XP is old and does
Windows XP is old and does not suport over 4GB of RAM being 32 bit only. Windows vist stank. windows 7 64 bit home premium is excellent. Its faster, better. However Windows 8 forces us to use the crappy tiles and nixes our beloved start/windows button. They need to bring it back and I’ll love windows 8.
I still really like windows
I still really like windows XP, and I wish they could have just fixed the windows XP x64 to better handle 32 bit apps, and also add dx11
I dual boot windows 7 and windows XP, but it is hard to switch when both OS can do the same thing.
If you look at people’s arguments for upgrading, the number one reason is that the OS is old. Other than things like direct x, they are usually unable to list a different reason.
What do you do on a daily basis and can you do the same thing on windows XP, for the vast majority of people, the answer is yes that that is why microsoft is having so much trouble getting people to move to a newer OS. Windows XP does what they need it to do.
The main reason why I still like windows XP, is that on a modern PC (not really modern by 2013 standards), windows Xp runs insanely fast when it comes to responsiveness and various elements in the OS
here is an example of what happens when windows XP is running on a more modern HDD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLsNxKjp9L8
Windows XP represents a time when programmers actually had to put thought into optimizing code to be IO friendly since hard drives at the time were insanely slow. You cant have a menu or single window requiring 20+ MB of assets to be loaded from the hard drive like in windows 7.
The end result of having an OS designed for an environment where IO’s were few and far between, is an OS that responds pretty much instantly on a modern hard drive. It usually takes an SSD on windows 7 to get the same type of responsiveness.
You can also see how inefficient modern OS have gotten, consider the functionality you gain in going from windows Xp to windows 7, if you were to quantify them, then create a ratio between the size of the OS and the functionality provided, how would windows XP look compared to windows 7.
Windows XP takes abound 700MB of hard drive space on install, windows 7 takes about 13GB of space to install.
Shouldn’t windows 7 offer at least 18 times more features/ quantifiable functionalities?
The goal of an OS is usually to run and manage your applications as easily and efficiently as possible.
If windows 7 did not allow you to install any applications (you can only use what the fresh install comes with) How many of you would still be using windows 7?
As I have said before, I use both, but in my experience, if I am not playing dx10/11 games, or running MAYA and some video editing applications that require 64 bit, I generally prefer to boot into windows XP
PS windows 7 is also not truly any more secure than windows XP. If you look at the windows updates, pretty much every security update that patches a vulnerability, patches the same vulnerability for windows XP, Windows vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. The UAC and other supposed security features does not stop the exploits being patched from working.
(even worst, more exploits are being discovered for some of the new features added to windows 7 and 8 that most people are not and probably never will use but are running in the background anyway) (the more code you run, the more exploits you are open to, and microsoft likes leaving all services and crap on instead of keeping all additional non basic services off and having some function in explorer that will pop up a warning when a process calls for a service that is disabled so that the user can manually enable the services they need. (and thus you also get around 200-300MB (RAM) worth of crap running that most users will likely never need loading at startup)
XP will never die. lol
XP will never die. lol
Windows XP will remain in old
Windows XP will remain in old computers as long as computer functions properly. If we assume 10 years lifetime of computer then taking Windows 7 arrived in 2009 as a start, Windows XP will be definitely be seen till 2019.
personally I would advice people to move from xp to windows 7 because of stability and security issues.
Ofcourse you will be seeing windows xp even after 2019.
While that’s good advice,
While that’s good advice, moving from XP to 7 involves moving to new hardware as well. I actually WANT to move to new hardware, but my budget insists that I take care of those pesky bills, then other hardware like my car with what little is left. My computer is so far down on the hardware list, it’s not even funny…
It’s interesting that so many
It’s interesting that so many people love Windows XP now compared to when it first shipped back in 2001. The OS had compatibility issues and did not support USB 2.0. In fact, some of the same criticisms leveled at Windows 8 were also made about XP. After Service Pack 2 dropped in 2004, three years after the operating system became available, everyone loved it.
That said, it’ll be sad when support for Windows XP finally dies.
There is something you people
There is something you people are failing to take note of. A popular strategy used by these “solution” companies. Microsoft is in business, just like the makers of Antiviruses. It is a well known fact that the only instance a consumer will be moved to spend money is when there is a need to. So if so far there is no need to move to Win 7 and Microsoft has to keep running then a need needs to be created. How is this? By either launching a malicious code to warrant an upgrade. It’s how Antivirus companies survive. It’s all about that shinny little dime siting unperturbed in your pocket, not so much your welfare. Ever asked yourself, how is it that an Antivirus company you know is the only one that can handle a particular outbreak of malicious code especially a more current release of an Antivirus compared to the one you already have? Simple! A need has been created and it is for you to walk through puzzle to find the “cookie” at the end of your pursuit for a solution.
Kinda makes sense why the very first poster is suggesting guys to move to open source. Am actually on Win 7 and on a heavily overclocked i5, but still can’t help noticing how fast Win Xp still is on a freshly formatted P4 dual core, compared to what I have, the speeds match except for multi-task and heavy multi-threader apps. Win Xp is still competitively fast compared to Win 7.
I will be moving to Ubuntu
I will be moving to Ubuntu when I can no longer use WinXP on my older computer that keeps chugging along.
My older machines are running
My older machines are running on WinXP. I still have a clean copy of Win98. Due to some network limitations, I’ve refrain for it usage.
Now, my newer machines are only Win7 due to some legacy support and new hardware compatibility.
Am I inclined toward Linux OS? Yes. Even more so as the community is catching up to hardware/software compatibility. Steam is pushing hard for Linux support. 🙂
Sadly, my major project only support Win98/WinXP. Haven’t tested on Win7, yet.
Well i look for some Tiny
Well i look for some Tiny good supported Linux Distro’s to Run nasty MS in vBox or even on x64 on SmartOS ! Life without MS is nearly impossible due no other system support Win app fully and to get even worse MS tendency to cripple just everything that touches goes on even further ! Look at the metro shell in win8 looks like skinned win 3.1 and now use it on workstation if you like/can. Who has money to buy over expensive wide touch screens just to run nasty win8 with metro on top of it ? And who is telling user that user desperate need home supercomputer just to browse internet ? Just look at browser development. They are all going MAD !!! This is not progress this is money making on users back ! WinXp is not limited in RAM use, can use more than 4 GB ram just creators/developers are crippled it ! Just look at latest MS development of OS and how over sized it is ! Who needs such crappy far to big OS ! Making system backup and other task becomes time intensive not to mention CPU power needed to do so – bigger means slow, means more error surface, more security risks and so on – well known story with beard from MS !!! I can hardly wait for some intelligent Linux capable to run all win app ! The other alternative is MAC ! The OSX Mavericks for PC is free now !!! Far more better as MS ever was !!!