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Who is still runnig XP?

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Joe Hone:
Just curious if you are running XP as your main OS, and why?

I still run XP for my audio production work and have a PC I had built in 2008 doing all the heavy lifting. It works like new, has never crashed, and for stability and reliability purposes there is no need to change it. But I think change is coming - many of us stayed with XP because there were so many failures with Vista that developers stayed away and XP remains the most stable OS for many applications. But it appears DAW developers are moving toward 64 bit because of the speed - just because I was curious, I bought a Windows 7 64 bit laptop to try out a 64 bit DAW and it does many functions in about 20% of the time as the same program running XP 32 bit. At some point the speed alone will make working with XP less productive.

TaoPhoenix:
Just curious if you are running XP as your main OS, and why?

I still run XP for my audio production work and have a PC I had built in 2008 doing all the heavy lifting. It works like new, has never crashed, and for stability and reliability purposes there is no need to change it. But I think change is coming - many of us stayed with XP because there were so many failures with Vista that developers stayed away and XP remains the most stable OS for many applications. But it appears DAW developers are moving toward 64 bit because of the speed - just because I was curious, I bought a Windows 7 64 bit laptop to try out a 64 bit DAW and it does many functions in about 20% of the time as the same program running XP 32 bit. At some point the speed alone will make working with XP less productive.
-Joe Hone (January 25, 2013, 10:32 AM)
--- End quote ---

I am, basically because I am of that crowd that likes to know about tangible progress when OS upgrades are made, not just to give companies random revenue. My rig was built by a buddy in about 2006. 64 Bit really seems to be the struggling point even now - Firefox just had another debate about whether 64 bit builds were worth it and the answer came back as "no".

Win 7 was "competent", but hardly a reason to do something as dramatic as switch, because I for one have 1,000 hours of "sunk time" in my comp of installed programs and notes and stuff. Now rumors/made-up-bs have it that Win 8 however irritating it might be, might run fairly light because of the whole shift away from Aero eye candy to more mobileOS devices with less power to waste on bells and whistles.

Now if we recall what I shall describe as nearly thundering marketing over Win8, (and MS has done pseudo-vaporware marketing for a LONG time, witness:
"Cairo" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Cairo
"Longhorn"/"Blackcomb" (which became "Windows7-Beta1" and then the real release of Win7.)

So it's kinda amazing there was almost exactly ONE article that MS wants to release something next year, presumably either "8.1" or "9" aka "Windows Blue". THAT's the context I want to see. Then I just need to borrow a geek to see if my rig can handle it. I used pretty high-end-for-the-time parts in 2006 for just those cases, so we'll see if I get lucky and my hardware doesn't give out before then.

Paul Keith:
Distrust of Win7, 8, etc. There may be no DRM but I just don't buy into features of newer versions of Windows. (They are not exciting unlike new Linux DE features)

I miss the speedy-ness and simplicity of Win98 and if I could be sure I could troubleshoot and install all future software on it, I'd pick it too over WinXP. (Hate that default too many windows up and down arrow and you have x number of windows thing in XP. Hate the Mac look of Win7. Hate the Tablet look of Win8.)

Carol Haynes:
64 Bit really seems to be the struggling point even now
-TaoPhoenix (January 25, 2013, 10:43 AM)
--- End quote ---

Really - why?

Been using 64 bit for years without noticing any particular issues.

Just upgraded a 4 year old laptop that came with Vista 32bit HP to Win 8 64bit and it installed fine and found all the drivers it needs without issue. Not got any software that won't install on 64bit (though I have some that won't install on 32bit any more).

I miss the speedy-ness and simplicity of Win98
-Paul Keith (January 25, 2013, 10:55 AM)
--- End quote ---

I don't especially miss the crashes, freezes and BSODs - plus disk corruption!

Seriously it took me a while to move from XP to 7 but there is no way I would move back now and I'd go to Linux before returning to the misery of Windows 98 !!!

Josh:
:greenclp: :greenclp: :greenclp:   Man, if I could like a post, I would like Carol's above. Bravo!!!  :-* :-* :-* 

On a side note, no, I am not running XP but on a handful of systems that are too old to justify loading Win7/Win8 on. I am in the minority that actually enjoys Windows 8 and I am running Windows 7 on my other systems. Like Carol, I have had ZERO issues with 64 bit versions of Windows since XP 64. The issues with XP 64 were developer/hardware manufacturer buy-in and as such the drivers sucked. Likewise, I would NEVER go back to any OS based on the 9x code-base. Microsoft releasing Windows XP and eliminating the antiquated OSes was the best move they could have made for the industry.

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