Have You Upgraded WIN XP Yet? ... 95% of Bank ATMs Have Not!

rv2go wrote:
I have a 7 year old Sony laptop that came with XP installed. When I registered it with Sony, they sent me a Windows 7 installation CD. At that time there were a lot of negative comments being made about Windows 7 so I stayed with the XP because I was happy with it. I don't how it will work today, but I am thinking about having the Windows 7 installed.

Widows 7 didn't come out until October 2009,you must have waited a few years before you registered your 7 year old lap top.

An ATM running XPe (XP Embedded) is understandable. This is an OS that is not meant to ever be upgraded, is never on the Internet proper, and if it does, it uses a heavy firewall.

I've seen some ATMs actually end up using plain old XP... then they will eventually fail and will not start up, demanding a valid CD key and activation code.

Of course, the best answer is going with Windows 8.1 Embedded Pro. This will at least give a service life of 5-10 years.

A heads up to anyone thinking of buying a Win 8 machine and then rolling back to 7: be aware that some hardware is NOT backward compatible (no drivers), and that 8 uses a different BIOS system that can cause problems trying to install 7 on some machines, according to a number of forum posts on geek sites. So if you plan to do this, do your homework before you open your wallet.

drsteve wrote:
A heads up to anyone thinking of buying a Win 8 machine and then rolling back to 7: be aware that some hardware is NOT backward compatible (no drivers), and that 8 uses a different BIOS system that can cause problems trying to install 7 on some machines, according to a number of forum posts on geek sites. So if you plan to do this, do your homework before you open your wallet.

Technically, Win 8 doesn't use a different BIOS system but most likely comes installed on newer machines that use UEFI instead of BIOS. To install Win 7 32-bit on newer hardware requires you to change the UEFI settings to use the Legacy boot option. 64-bit Win 7 can be installed using UEFI boot settings.

Well it's been 6 days now and win 8.1 seems pretty good, still getting used to it but glad I went with windows instead of apple, after seeing how well it works I regret getting the Iphone 5S and should have stayed with a Samsung for better connectivity with win 8.1.

strollin wrote:

drsteve wrote:
A heads up to anyone thinking of buying a Win 8 machine and then rolling back to 7: be aware that some hardware is NOT backward compatible (no drivers), and that 8 uses a different BIOS system that can cause problems trying to install 7 on some machines, according to a number of forum posts on geek sites. So if you plan to do this, do your homework before you open your wallet.

Technically, Win 8 doesn't use a different BIOS system but most likely comes installed on newer machines that use UEFI instead of BIOS. To install Win 7 32-bit on newer hardware requires you to change the UEFI settings to use the Legacy boot option. 64-bit Win 7 can be installed using UEFI boot settings.

^ This.

Until the time that the legacy option in a UEFI BIOS is gone that is...

I dual-boot XP and Ubuntu. I have about 70% compatibility running WINE; some things that don't run there I can either get a similar Linux app or I have to switch back to XP. Mostly it's the newer games that struggle...some of the old, old games I still enjoy aren't supported on Win7, or I've been lazy and they're supported now but I haven't checked :)

I stopped leaving my PC's on when I quit Folding@Home and Seti@Home. I was debating using several machines to do bitcoin mining, but that's not worth it, with the specialized ASIC's and other hardware that a lot of people seem to be using.