Posted on 03/29/2014 4:30:04 AM PDT by Las Vegas Dave
Windows XP is dying. On April 8, Microsoft will stop supporting the ancient operating system that was released in 2001 — and at one point was used by 400 million people.
You might think that an operating system that was actually engineered in the late 90s would be fully obsolete and unused by now. After all, since XP came out, Microsoft has released several major replacement versions: Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 (recently upgraded to Windows 8.1).
But there’s something about Windows XP. It’s basic, stable, fast enough, and good enough for a lot of people. It’s still running on more than 10 percent of the world’s computers, and it’s huge in China.
Still, it’s time. It’s hard to keep an operating system this old up to snuff in today’s online environment. XP works, but it’s not built to the same security level as modern operating systems. Microsoft doesn’t want to keep writing new security upgrades for it, so on April 8, it’s stopping. No more security updates. No more support. Your XP computer will still work, but Microsoft won’t help you anymore. Microsoft is pretty harsh about it: “XP cannot be considered safe to use after support ends.”
ends.”
Microsoft urges you to upgrade. There’s even a site that tells you when your XP world will end: AmIRunningXP.com. Microsoft also has more info on what "end of support" means. To be fair, moving off XP would be a smart thing to do. Newer operating systems are easier to use (at least most of them), they run the cool new apps, and they’re definitely safer. But how do you move from an old computer that’s running XP into the modern era? I’ve heard a lot of advice on how to make the transition. Not all of it good.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/still-on-windows-xp-heres-some-bad-advice-80911845810.html
If you use IE, XP won’t upgrade to the latest versions, and a lot of websites now won’t even work with IE8 or earlier versions.
Firefox
A lot of users don’t even think to use a different browser. I don’t use IE unless I absolutely have to.
I shitcanned 7 and went back to XP.
There is some ridiculous advice on this thread. Do your own research, folks. Far away from FR, preferably.
Good advice. Nothing beats a Virtual PC for surfing the web.
Install MS Virtual PC 2007 or some other virtual box. Install your favorite operating system as a Virtual machine; put all the antivirus stuff and all you favorite aps in it and then close it. Make a copy of the virtual machine and boot up the copy. If anything nasty happens while you visit some website, then erase the copy and make a new one. You can have anything as a virtual machine or you can simultaneously run several. Linux, Win XP, Win Vista, Win 2000, even Dos 6.2. They all run fine and with no worry of contaminating your system.
I LOVED XP but migrated to windows 7 several years ago and have found it to be the most stable windows OS ever. Have windows 8.1 on a newer laptop and don’t like it nearly as well as 7.
XP had the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” - yes?
I used Win7 for many moons - far more stable than XP.
My new ASUS Ultrabook came with Win8 which I immediately upgraded to Win8.1. Easily the best and fastest of any MS OS I’ve used.
I held off getting rid of XP until about a month ago when it became obvious that I needed to bite the bullet. I decided to upgrade to Win8 despite the claims of how bad it is just so I would have the latest system. So I upgraded to Win8 on three desktop machines and also have a tablet and phone using Win8. I have been pleasantly surprised. On the desktops I just boot to the Windows desktop rather than the tiles using Start8, which makes it just like using XP except more robust. The tiles are basically useless for anything other than a touchscreen, but I use them on my touchscreens and they are quite nice. So far all the machines have been rock solid.
That'd be like Noah being warned to continue caring for the animals aboard or else the flood waters will go even higher -- perhaps even reach the Moon.
There is security intelligence that indicates that there will be malicious attacks on XP. These are zero day threats and anti-virus and malware companies are unable to block the attacks, until after the attack has occurred and a counter-measure has been created.
Microsoft will not provide any security updates unless a business pays for Custom Support. You must have Premier or Enterprise agreement in place with Microsoft. Custom Support cost $50 per machine per quarter and you need to purchase Custom Support for a minimum of 750 machines. At least that's the deal I got from MS. I think I saw an email from MS that they changed the terms earlier this past week, but it did not change our agreement since it was already in place.
Even with MS Custom support, XP boxes are not protected until after a threat has been discovered. Additional security measures should be in place and there should be no PII or IP information on those boxes.
For what is worth, part of my job for over the last 15 months has been migrating 80,000+ XP machines to Win 7. When I left the office yesterday, we had ~260 machines going on Custom Support and another 200 or so machines segmented from the network.
BTW, I am personally OS agnostic. At home, I have Mac OS, Win 7, Linux, iOS and Android OS. This post was written on an iPad, running iOS 7.1
“If you want a trifecta, get an Apple. Big money, yes, but you can have virtual Windows AND Linux systems on the Apple...”
I run Windows 7 in a VM (Parallels 8) on my Mac.
It’s a Mac Mini and very reasonably priced. An entry level Mac Mini runs $599 - $509 when you find one at the Apple Refurb store. I purchased mine at B&H Photo and they threw in Parallels 8 for free.
I post this to you as many, I feel, are unaware of the reasonable price point of the Mac Mini.
I, like you, am not an Apple fanboy. I needed to replace my 8 year old XP laptop which could not keep up with my needs. All that was available at the time were computers offering Windows 8. PHEW!
I was thinking of getting a MacBook Pro but balked at the $1,200 price.
I needed to do something clever and the Mac Mini was an easy route and reasonably priced. I had two monitors, a mouse and keyboard so all I needed was a computer.
Since then I’ve added a 16” USB monitor and I have travelled with the Mac Mini and it fits in my old laptop case - I did buy a 15’ AC cord to keep me plugged in.
Thought you might appreciate the heads up...
PS - it’s the single easiest machine to upgrade RAM on - flip it over and unscrew the base - like a peanut butter jar - POP! out come the RAM and in goes 16 GB of RAM upgrade. And you can add a second HD with a disk doubler kit. It’s a very useful machine if you are into setting up VM machines.
For what it's worth I upgraded my wife's 5 year old Netbook having an Atom processor and 2Gb ram to Win8. It was a relatively painless upgrade and it works great. In fact, it's quite a bit peppier than it was before because Win8 is a more efficient operating system. The one thing to watch out for on older machines is the screen resolution. You can't use the Win 8 tiles (largely worthless on a non-touchscreen anyway) or, more importantly, access the Windows store unless the screen resolution is at least 1024 x 768. Access to Windows store is necessary for upgrading to Win 8.1 so if you only have Win 8 that could be an issue. My Netbook has an external monitor port so I was able to overcome the resolution issue by hooking up an external monitor long enough to get the necessary downloads from the Windows store. There is also a regedit workaround posted online that is supposed to solve the issue, but I didn't have to resort to that.
Unless you have Windows-only apps that have no open source comparables, moving to Linux or Android is an option, and a cheap one. If a new machine is in the budget, there's also Mac.
Windows 7 is still available for purchase, but it appears that this includes only full-install products. The Upgrade products aren't listed at Newegg, for example.
I have legacy Windows apps, and elected to build a new PC based on an AMD APU, running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, with XP Mode for the legacies. Once installed, networking will be turned off inside XP Mode to protect it.
XP Mode (which isn't supported on Win8, by the way) probably won't be available for download after EOL day. You have to have Win 7 (Ultimate, Pro or Enterprise only) installed and activated to get XP Mode. Installing XP Mode is challenging, esp. on AMD, which requires a hot fix. Installing XPM on Intel might be impossible, as their low-end stuff often has the necessary VM logic fused off.
> Make a copy of the virtual machine and boot up the copy.
Yes! Excellent suggestion!
Makes it even easier to forgo the virus software.
:)
I do development, so I need a lot of raw POWER for quick compiles on my virtual guests.
I know somebody who recently bought an Apple for over $2800 to get the processing power I get in my $1200 system. He needs to do development for Apple, too, so he had to buy the Apple hardware, because Apple does not sell their OS to run as virtual guests on any other hardware. Fascist pigs. :)
>> Make a copy of the virtual machine and boot up the copy.
> Yes! Excellent suggestion!
> Makes it even easier to forgo the virus software.
:)
Don’t forget to turn off sharing and other stuff and do not allow it to share your other resources. Also make it a part of a different workgroup.
Agree with all your advice except this ...
> or Android
Android is a Google product. It is spyware masquerading as an OS. I would have absolutely nothing to do with it. I don’t have a “smart” phone, either, because I would have to choose between two fascist companies, Apple and Google. No.Thanks.
I have several business computers on XP that are too resource-deficient to upgrade. My proprietary software won’t run on anything else. I am closing my small business in June, so only need it to run up till then. After that, it’s the recycle center for them all. Just don’t want MS pushing “the Kill-Button” on them and putting my business out-of-business before I am ready...
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