Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
WinXP is officially dead!
mouser:
I imagine there might be a lot of people like me for whom their XP machine is not their primary machine but their netbook or laptop (my main PC is Win7).
--- End quote ---
very good point -- and those machines are completely fine to leave running win xp, imho.
Stoic Joker:
I think these security fears about windows XP no longer being "supported" are way overblown -- keep your internet *applications* updated and don't be stupid, and I think users of XP are going to be safe indefinitely, with nothing to worry about.-mouser (April 08, 2014, 12:43 AM)
--- End quote ---
Indefinitely seems a bit optimistic. I'll give it a year before anything really wild happens, because people will initially be trying everything to fortify their now "officially" antique systems...and it takes time to get sloppy. I think anyone out there with a currently known XP exploit will sit on it for at least 6 months - hay there's no rush now... - to maximize its effectiveness.
MS's almost comical at times harbinger of doom EOL warnings remind my of the Blood on the Highway driver's Ed. films from the 70s. But I've always liked comparing the Information Highway to an Interstate Highway, so... much like back then...some folks get the point, and others just need a good shock to blast them out of their lethargy.
Hell I've still got a few Windows 2000 test systems that I refuse to part with either.
TaoPhoenix:
the day has arrived! support for the persistent WinXP has officially ended. Anyone here going to defy Microsoft and keep using winxp?
...
-lanux128 (April 08, 2014, 12:18 AM)
--- End quote ---
I have no intent to "defy" Microsoft ... for me it's 180 degrees from "sticking it to the man". Instead, I'm part of the category that tremendously respects Linux but gave up attempting to convert for anything but maybe a special use case.
My personal history:
A. My "teeth cutting" machine was the Commodore 128, which was a perfect sweet spot between age 8 per the C64 which I gave up on as being too hard, and age 13 when I received the C128 a little after it released.
My father was savvy enough to jump into the Mac "paradigm" soon after they began appearing, so I got some important early experience with that GUI which sure enough became "the future".
In 1999 I received a Win98 machine as part of non-cash compensation for a project, and it was the first "Modern Windows" machine I had, which I treated as basically "Win95 SP1 with fewer bugs". A few years later I had a friend build a cut-rate Win2000 machine, but from my user experience as "promising novice" that also felt like "Win95 SP2" with even fewer bugs.
Then about 2007 with a little spare money from a good job, I began to think ahead with that same buddy about the future of Windows. By that point all the early "Longhorn" hope/mania had faded. The key story (via Paul Thurrott's version I think), was that at some crucial moment "one day at Microsoft", "Longhorn on the XP codebase died". Wiki's summary includes "...The original Longhorn, based on the Windows XP source code, was scrapped, and Longhorn's development started anew, building on the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 codebase".
There are some really nice people at the lower levels of MS out of the limelight. One day I'd really like to ask around and try to get "the history of that day". Probably some middle manager can authorize an interview this late in the game. I'm sure there were rumblings internally for years, but there has to be one key engineer's final report that then forced the top level executive official public decision. It would be awesome to get a copy of that report for official posterity because this is THE premier place where you gang can enjoy ripping into it!
:)
But by then some of the very early rumblings about Vista's famous problems were floating in. Not counting that first Win98 machine, I've been a late adopter, having previously learned a little about the woes of both Win Me and very early Win XP pre-SP2. But by 2007 Win XP SP3 had long since been cleaned up and became the standard OS today. So then on the hardware side I forecasted very well and spent the extra funds going for the first Kentsfield QuadCore with two Terabyte Drives.
My nickname was also picked very well... "Twilight". Today that nickname became official: I would ride out XP "until it officially died" waiting to see what the future would bring far down, to get the late-adopter's hindsight opinion once again. (Marketing is Hype - intended to create "This Year's Sales". But the truth tends to show up about a year later.)
Quick rundown:
XP3 - "The gold standard to beat"
Vista - "Nope"
Win 7 - "Probably has finesses in the back engine but nothing exciting"
Win 8 - "Metro ModernUI usability ugliness"
Win 8.1 - "Weak compromise from MS - still nope".
Meanwhile I am *terrified* of the total cost of a real upgrade on my hardware. (Note my monitor is going to die any week now!) So I am hanging on tight with my best visionary thinking of 2007 on the Twilight project machine. Now I'm not happy at all being "officially out of support" for XP.
Here are the options as I see them:
Part 1: Temp use of XP for a while to buy more time.
Part 2a: Hope that the new engineering oriented CEO Satya Nadella is the next Dave Cutler and does a stunning job on Windows 9, then strip it aka turn off Aero/whatever and hope my comp can run it. Then I use my spare sorta-unused drive as a Dual Boot to test it.
Part 2b: Then if that simply does not work, get a copy of Windows 7 from somewhere which I *think* will run if I did my specs right, and then give up for a few more years. By the time *that* dies, I'll be content to let my 2006 machine go with a sincere "RIP and oh gawd thank you" in favor of something from 2016ish.
Part 3: Hunker down and reload the best 30% of the programs I experimented with, with a list of what the others used to be, and call it a day. (The soft data is easy, courtesy of that "backup" program with the funny name from here.)
Whew! Fortunately you gang are not scared of as long post. But I'm a little emotional here, because this is THE moment I have been watching for my entire modern computing life!
:tellme:
TaoPhoenix:
I think these security fears about windows XP no longer being "supported" are way overblown -- keep your internet *applications* updated and don't be stupid, and I think users of XP are going to be safe indefinitely, with nothing to worry about.
Having said that -- I held out upgrading from windows XP to Windows 7 for quite some time and I can say that minus some minor quibbles, I have been very pleasantly surprised with Windows 7 and would heartily recommend it to everyone.
-mouser (April 08, 2014, 12:43 AM)
--- End quote ---
Windows 7 is awesome. It's not perfect, but it's the best Windows experience I've ever had.
Sadly, my netbook doesn't run it (or XP) very well, so I've recently installed Linux Mint XFCE on it in place of XP.
-Deozaan (April 08, 2014, 02:38 AM)
--- End quote ---
XP is fine for anyone with any sense - trouble is 90% of people using it don't have any sense at all!
-Carol Haynes (April 08, 2014, 03:41 AM)
--- End quote ---
I imagine there might be a lot of people like me for whom their XP machine is not their primary machine but their netbook or laptop (my main PC is Win7). It doesn't have the specs to be upgraded to Win7 or 8.
I just find MS's move annoying. It certainly won't push me to rush out and buy a Win8 netbook/laptop/tablet. If anything, this move is more likely to prompt such people to explore alternative OS's such as Linux or ChromeOS (as Deozaan also said above).
-dr_andus (April 08, 2014, 04:50 AM)
--- End quote ---
I imagine there might be a lot of people like me for whom their XP machine is not their primary machine but their netbook or laptop is (my main PC is Win7).
--- End quote ---
very good point -- and those machines are completely fine to leave running win xp, imho.
-mouser (April 08, 2014, 04:51 AM)
--- End quote ---
But neither do I think the concerns are hogwash either. My machine is not going to fall over dead today, but it can't last forever either. However my opinion of Win7 is that it doesn't offer anything stunning to force a switch anytime soon. Rather, per my plan above, it's my "failsafe" for a much later decision. I see it more as a "Turbo XP and Not-Win8"!
The question of laptops/netbooks is fascinating though. Whatever I do on my project machine, it IS useful to have a fun little laptop for trips on the road, but you don't really care if an Act Of Nature kills it. So then if it's only on say 30 days a year, then I think XP can stay there indefinitely because I'd only be running about 10 programs and not experimenting all day like a mad scientist! I have a "decent amount of sense". Especially on that laptop, except for a little "Rule 34" browsing, the only news I'd really be scared of is if some devastating new exploit shows up that can smash XP to smithereens on a pure "out of the blue" attack.
However, I've given up on Linux. Too many little subtle apps and a couple of killer ones are on Windows. And I just don't have the chops to mess with those VM's and stuff.
40hz:
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version