Windows XP Support to End April 8, 2014

sue.t wrote:

Itching2go wrote:
Bottom line, I would recommend going to Windows 7 or 8 for anyone who uses their machine for on-line activities such as banking, email, etc, even if it means you need to purchase a new laptop/desktop. After all, if your'e current machine is running XP, it likely means it's many years old anyway and likely short on speed and capacity. The good news is that new PC's are running relatively cheap these days as long as you aren't a hard core gamer who needs 6 gb of RAM and a couple of terabytes of hard drive capacity.

IMHO...

My 7-year-old desktop converted to Windows 7 without issue. Runs much faster then it did with its original XP BUT I did reformat both hard drives before the new install. It was a high-end machine in 2007 when I bought it, running AutoCAD, Photoshop, etc. so I needed something with some zip. Had expected to need to update the graphics card, but that didn't happen either, the drivers all were compatible.

The old is 32-bit while the new desktop is 64-bit. Interestingly, only ONE item will not work on my 64-bit Win7 machine and that is an OLD Hauppauge TV viewer piece of hardware that isn't compatible with 64-bit. It continues to work on my 32-bit machine though.

Both printers, the dedicated scanner, the monitors, and all the software I had on the old XP 32-bit machine work with the Win7 64-bit machine. Impressive, really.

I'd bet that your old Hauppauge TV viewer app is 16-bit. Useful to know that a 64-bit version of Windows will run 32-bit apps, and a 32-bit version of Windows will run 16-bit apps. In other words, you can step back one, but not two. We ran into a lot.

Itching2go wrote:
Bottom line, I would recommend going to Windows 7 or 8 for anyone who uses their machine for on-line activities such as banking, email, etc, even if it means you need to purchase a new laptop/desktop. After all, if your'e current machine is running XP, it likely means it's many years old anyway and likely short on speed and capacity. The good news is that new PC's are running relatively cheap these days as long as you aren't a hard core gamer who needs 6 gb of RAM and a couple of terabytes of hard drive capacity.

IMHO...

My 7-year-old desktop converted to Windows 7 without issue. Runs much faster then it did with its original XP BUT I did reformat both hard drives before the new install. It was a high-end machine in 2007 when I bought it, running AutoCAD, Photoshop, etc. so I needed something with some zip. Had expected to need to update the graphics card, but that didn't happen either, the drivers all were compatible.

The old is 32-bit while the new desktop is 64-bit. Interestingly, only ONE item will not work on my 64-bit Win7 machine and that is an OLD Hauppauge TV viewer piece of hardware that isn't compatible with 64-bit. It continues to work on my 32-bit machine though.

Both printers, the dedicated scanner, the monitors, and all the software I had on the old XP 32-bit machine work with the Win7 64-bit machine. Impressive, really.

I find it interesting that MS is still updating XP like crazy. I had 14 updates the other day on a PC that is used every day.

Dick

I'm an IT manager with a very large financial services company. We're Just finishing a major 3-year project to upgrade all of our machines (better than 10,000 of them) from XP to Windows 7. As noted by Gdetrailer above, the real 'heavy lifting' for this project wasn't upgrading the desktops/laptops themselves. It was the remediation of the better than 200 older applications that would need to run on the Windows 7 operating system. Why did we make the investment? First, there was the security concerns related to the availability or security patches going away. Second was the future ability to run new applications as well as upgrades to existing applications. Windows 7 was an almost complete re-write of the operating system over XP, including a move to a 64-bit OS. Some software vendors of the type we purchase from will no longer develop on the 32-bit, XP platform. Third is performance. Windows 7 simply runs better than XP for our business. Personally, I run Windows 7, 64-bit on all three of my home machines, and don't feel the need to go to Windows 8 as there isn't all that much difference 'under the covers' between the two.

Bottom line, I would recommend going to Windows 7 or 8 for anyone who uses their machine for on-line activities such as banking, email, etc, even if it means you need to purchase a new laptop/desktop. After all, if your'e current machine is running XP, it likely means it's many years old anyway and likely short on speed and capacity. The good news is that new PC's are running relatively cheap these days as long as you aren't a hard core gamer who needs 6 gb of RAM and a couple of terabytes of hard drive capacity.

IMHO...

I like XP...

burlmart wrote:
What keeps nagging me is the spectre of MS itself being the source of malware that renders XP useless.

I wondered the same with XP getting slower and slower and crashing on my older desktop. I wondered if the CPU was starting to go, or maybe the hard drive. After updating to Win7 on that machine, no issues whatsoever. Runs quickly (it was a top of the line system in 2007) and well. No crashes, no lagging, no quirks.

Updated my XP machine, purchased Nov 2007, with Windows 7. Perfectly happy.

Win7 has proven itself far more useful than Vista (on one of my laptops). Quite like the improvements brought along by Win7.

Not sure I'd appreciate Windows 8 the same.

The ironic thing is that MS hiked prices on their enterprise stuff and it made for a profitable total year for them.

My concern is that XP is an OS made in 2001, trying to deal with year 2014 security issues. To put this into context, 14 years before 2001, computers were barely showing color graphics, much less networking or anything but 8-bit sound. Since 2001, the bad guys have changed from the college student who might deface a website to professional criminal organizations, gangs, terrorist organizations , and even nations. The US lost its entire solar production entirely to China due to security breaches.

So, with the exponentially greater threat level, it is wise to see about moving to Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell if at all possible, although this may not be doable by a lot of people.

1775 wrote:

But if you believe that once MS walks away from XP, every hacker will swoop down on your PC, you better go out and buy Win 8.1 or a new computer and make the new CEO of MS happy.

What keeps nagging me is the spectre of MS itself being the source of malware that renders XP useless.

Another attempt by Microsoft to sell Win 8.1 and PCs installed with 8.1. MS is desperate. Their new CEO says that PC sales are down because of tablets - what else could he say - we, MS, with Win 8 have ruined the PC market?

My XP machines have not been updated since - not sure when. They work just fine with a non-MS firewall and antivirus software.

But if you believe that once MS walks away from XP, every hacker will swoop down on your PC, you better go out and buy Win 8.1 or a new computer and make the new CEO of MS happy.