On Oct 25 2011 Windows Xp Turns 10 (Retail Availablity date)

[SteveG1988]

Yup, Xp was released to the masses 10 years ago on that date. It will be supported til 2014

[Michael in Philly]

My last two new laptops have been reburbished ones bought from overstock.com, because they have XP.

[SteveG1988]

Michael, I honestly would say switch to Vista or 7...XP's days are numbered now. I expect to see less and less stuff to be written for it between late 2011 and 2014.

[Michael in Philly]

I used Vista briefly and didn't like it.  And it was "brief" because the laptop crashed, although I suppose that's not the operating system's fault.
We still have XP at work as well.
Don't know what you mean by "stuff written for it."

[SteveG1988]

Vista SP1 and SP2 really fixed the OS, and SP3 (win 7) tweaked it even more. I have had very little issues in regards to either of those two operating systems.

But the problem is, Xp is slowly becoming less and less supported, Some technology cannot be backported to XP with drivers for example.  One problem is hard drives with 4k sector sizes. Xp cannot handle it.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888 For example.

[JREwing78]

It's impressive that XP has remained viable for as long as it has. In fact, I'm typing this to you now on a older HP laptop running XP. Works fine.

That being said, XP days are numbered, and not just because Microsoft will stop supporting it in 2014. Modern software requires far more RAM, hard drive space, and processing power than XP is able to handle.

We are to the point now that software authors are creating new software that XP is unable to run, because the software relies on features not available in XP.

Once upon a time, 512MB of RAM was quite generous for a system running XP; that was plenty enough to multitask smoothly. Now 512MB is simply unusable even with just one program open, and XP running modern software really needs 2GB.

From a security standpoint, 64-bit Windows 7 is as secure as it gets in Windows. It's been designed with security in mind from the beginning, whereas XP had security measures added to it (for Service Pack 2) only after it was glaringly obvious how insecure it was. Even now, Microsoft is spending an inordinate amount of effort shoring up XP security holes compared to Vista or Windows 7.

Honestly, there's a bit of a learning curve going from XP to 7. Same deal with going from Office 2003 to Office 2010 - there are considerable changes that take a couple weeks to get used to. But Windows 7 is solid, reliable, and performs as well as XP on modern hardware.

It might've made sense to stick with XP when the alternative was Vista. It doesn't make sense now.

[txstateends]

So, what will the average XP user looking at paying to upgrade to Win 7?  I haven't really had a chance to sit down and price-compare all that yet, but it would be nice to see what $$$ is needed.

[J N Winkler]

I have seen the death knell rung for XP before and it is still around, so I am not going to take this latest announcement seriously.  I got a brand-new laptop a month ago (Asus G73SW-XA1 with Core i7 and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium), but my old XP laptop still works fine and I still have plenty of stuff on it that I haven't ported to the new laptop because it is still difficult to find 64-bit versions of common software that will run under Windows 7 without qualification (no "*32" in Task Manager process listing, no need to use compatibility mode or XP Mode, etc.).

Some of Windows 7's usability improvements have been offset by pruning of backward compatibility, the defeaturing of the Windows Explorer file manager (for example, it no longer remembers selections when you change folders, and it won't preserve selections when you re-sort the file listing), and by misbehavior on the part of the application developers, such as withdrawing certain functionalities and making others hard to access.  (Acrobat MDI versus SDI is a classic example, but there are many, many others.  For example, I now have to use batch files to process TxDOT construction plans sets because the latest versions of WinZip break self-extracting archives.)  Moreover, in some respects Windows 7 steps backward; for example, XP will clean up crashed applications without fuss 95% of the time while about one-third of the time, Windows 7 will attempt to close the program, fail, and leave the program icon and window on the screen but grayed out; also, it is much harder to force "details view" in Windows Explorer in 7 than in XP.

I still use the old laptop on a more or less daily basis as a movies and TV laptop.  It is also the only laptop I currently own which has working copies of Photoshop (version 6, not supposed to be compatible with Windows 7), AutoCAD (2004 release, not supposed to be compatible with Windows 7), Microsoft Office Professional 2000 SR-1 (supposed to work under Windows 7 except for some issues with print drivers; successfully installed but then wouldn't run on my laptop), plus several viewing plugins which I use for highway construction plans, such as AutoDesk (needed for *.dwf files) and an Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin for Bentley Interplot (needed for *.dpr files, which was how Utah DOT published construction plan sheets before they finally saw the light and started using PDF instead).  I do have full-version Acrobat (X) on the new Asus but I haven't even tried printing anything with the Distiller printer--first I need to check whether my job options files will transfer from Acrobat version 7 on the XP laptop (doubtful) and also what I need to do to force compatibility with PDF 1.4 and suppress raster image resampling.  There isn't even a 64-bit version of Firefox on general release yet and I had to use compatibility mode to get the 32-bit version for Windows 7 to work on my laptop.  Not having a working copy of Firefox was not an option because it is my preferred browser (by far) and has my saved passwords and ad- and Flash-blocking plugins.

The Aero "user experience" is kind of cute, but there is little that can be done in XP that is genuinely easier to do in 7 (fewer keystrokes or mouse clicks) and feature churn in applications has so far failed to expand the end user's ability to do anything useful.  Although I now have effective email search with the latest version of Thunderbird, I have not realized anything like the gains in my ability to do things on the new Asus laptop that I did when I bought the XP laptop five years ago and transitioned from Windows 98 SE to XP.  XP and the applications written for it are just too good.

I am happy with my new Asus laptop but frankly I got it to take care of problems with the old laptop which had nothing to do with the OS or applications.  It had so little CPU power that I had to manipulate process priorities to maintain responsiveness, it had a cold-cathode screen backlight which had already failed once and is headed for another replacement (the new laptop has a LED backlight, which should be more durable), and with only a 100-GB hard disk with 50-GB data partition, data churn was starting to reach unacceptable levels.

[SSOWorld]

I use 7 exclusively now at home as of 10/19/2011 when I replaced my dying Vista laptop that lasted *gasp* about three years.  I still use XP on my work computers - one of them carrying Office 2003, the other Office 2007 (I have 07 at home).   I just got the notification for one being replaced with a new one that - If I don't use certain programs - will have Win 7. The other was replaced a year ago - so that one will be a Win 7 when it's replaced as well.  Though I will be getting Office 2010 on it by the end of the 1st Q of 2012.

[Takumi]

I got a then-state-of-the-art laptop with XP in early. 2005, and used it all the way until 2010 when I got a new laptop with 7. The XP laptop had a couple of major crashes but nothing like Vista, which I'm glad I skipped entirely. The main reason I got the new one was that space on the old one was severely limited, even with putting older files on external drives. Even now, the space on my newer laptop seems insignificant to new ones today (slightly off-topic, yes, but I wanted to point out it wasn't XP vs. 7 that got me to switch. In fact, I now have a netbook that runs XP)

[J N Winkler]

When I was shopping for a new laptop back in September, I looked at hard-disk sizes and realized that it is pretty easy to go up to 1.5 TB on a new laptop without breaking into a sweat, and all the way up to 2 TB with a bit of effort.  In the end I picked a laptop with 750 GB.

I estimate that I produce about 1.5-2 GB worth of data each day that requires archiving (my last external USB disk had 1 TB and took 18 months to fill).  This means that I need somewhere between 45 and 60 GB of "float" space in one hard drive partition in order not to be forced to archive data to DVD and external disk more frequently than once a month.  I also have about 25 GB worth of sign design sheets which I like to keep permanently available on my local HD, and about 10 GB worth of "working" files (mainly bid listings as well as the cyber equivalent of a junk drawer), plus up to 50 GB worth of files being prepared for archiving, so anything beyond about 150 GB in a single partition is gravy.  Since I have 394 GB in the data partition on the Asus, the constraint on what I can keep in it is not local disk space so much as free disk space for backups on a 1-TB external ultraportable which also has to back up ~60 GB on the old laptop and a separate 500-GB external ultraportable which I use mainly for movies, articles, and my research document archive.

I settled for far less than I could have gotten in terms of HD space largely because I wanted to increase the speed while still buying off the rack.  The default spin speed for laptop HDs is 5400 RPM, with 7200 RPM also being available but significantly harder to find in sizes of 1 TB and up.  On the old laptop CPU speed was the main constraint on my CPU hogs, but I sensed that disk speed was a significant factor whenever the files being worked on were large.  750 GB with 7200 RPM was pretty much the largest HD I could find without custom-ordering and also without accepting compromises in terms of screen quality and CPU speed.

My first priority after I got the new Asus was moving the CPU hogs over from the old laptop.  I still haven't gotten any of them to break through 45% CPU usage (on the old laptop they routinely went up to 100%, which meant that if I wanted the system to remain responsive, I had to set them to launch at lower-than-normal priority--start /wait /belownormal and all that).  I think the main performance constraint is now disk speed rather than CPU speed or memory.

[Roadgeek Adam]

I refuse to use newer Windows until the interface for Windows is improved. Vista and 7 are too Mac-like for me to handle. (I 99.9% of the time use XPs. My college until recently had 95s, 98s, 2000s and MEs running around. Most of the campus is XP, some Vistas. No 7s.

[SSOWorld]

Adam, It isn't going to get any better.

[xonhulu]

I get arguments from friends when I say this, but I wish XP had never been superceded.  I just don't like Vista and 7.  I can't really put my finger on why; maybe it's what Roadgeek Adam said.

[Revive 755]

I use XP on an older computer and Vista on my newer one, and will soon have to get used to 7 at work.  My reason for disliking Vista is that I can't get older games to even start on it, even in the various compatibility modes, but they run just fine on XP (which is a problem because the newer computer can better handle games than the older one).  Given that there are few new PC games that interest me these days, I will try and keep the older XP computer running as long as possible.

[corco]

I use 7 and XP fairly interchangeably (probably 60/40 in favor of 7), and honestly except in really technical circumstances (like trying to start old games!) I can't really even tell the difference anymore.

[J N Winkler]

I remember seeing talk somewhere on a Microsoft website of restoring much-liked Windows XP features "when the architecture and security model permit"--both the premise and its qualification are very telling about how Windows 7 compares with XP.

I don't think, though, that Windows 7 is like Macworld.  Yes, the desktop is broken out as a separate entity in both versions of the task switcher, single-document interfaces are the norm rather than the exception (though Firefox manages to hold on to a multiple-tab interface), and directory navigation in the Windows Explorer file chooser and in file save/open dialog boxes has been made more Mac-like, but it is still recognizable as Windows and nearly all of the standard keystroke shortcuts and "tricks" for selecting items still work.

Many of the annoyances people associate with Windows 7, such as one document per window and no window reuse, have as much to do with cross-platform application development as they do with Microsoft's efforts to influence application look and feel for Windows 7.  For example, Adobe claims the reason it introduced the single-document interface as an option for Acrobat in version 8, and made it the default and only option in version 9, was to have Acrobat work exactly the same way for Windows and Macs so that features could be developed in a common stream for both OSes with savings in development and testing.  (Of course, Adobe's CEO has to be paid . . .)

[JREwing78]

There's no reason not to use XP in a virtual machine or on a separate computer for tasks that you can't do in Windows 7. Given it's long lifespan and the numerous ways to use it, it'll live on long past 2014, particularly for things like gaming that won't require internet access.

So, what will the average XP user looking at paying to upgrade to Win 7?  I haven't really had a chance to sit down and price-compare all that yet, but it would be nice to see what $$$ is needed.

Assuming said person has a computer that has driver support for Windows 7, you can get a OEM or upgrade copy for around $100 from a number of online vendors. Frankly, you're probably better off getting a new computer with the new OS.

[Stratuscaster]

I refuse to use newer Windows until the interface for Windows is improved. Vista and 7 are too Mac-like for me to handle. (I 99.9% of the time use XPs. My college until recently had 95s, 98s, 2000s and MEs running around. Most of the campus is XP, some Vistas. No 7s.

Then you are just going to hate Windows 8.

At work, where we image and deploy workstations for many Fortune 500 clients and small-medium businesses, we still do quite a bit of XP imaging. One client made a big investment in Vista and is using it on all their systems. Most are starting to move to 7 - pretty much forced by the lack of XP driver support on newer systems.

Those that still need XP for old program compatibility reasons use either the "Windows XP Mode" in Win7 - which is just a virtual machine - or use something like VirtualBox (free) or VMware (not free) - a modern Win7 desktop with 4GB of RAM will run a 1GB XP virtual machine quite easily.

I've got Win7 running on some pretty old hardware - it's not happy doing it, and really you want 2GB minimum RAM to keep it happy even if you turn off all the "Fisher-Price" interface stuff. But it works.

[Roadgeek Adam]

Point is I can't do anything on a 7. The interface is way too confusing.

[rickmastfan67]

There isn't even a 64-bit version of Firefox on general release yet and I had to use compatibility mode to get the 32-bit version for Windows 7 to work on my laptop.  Not having a working copy of Firefox was not an option because it is my preferred browser (by far) and has my saved passwords and ad- and Flash-blocking plugins.

I'm running FF8 Beta with no problems on my W7 x64 system with no need to use the compatibility mode.  Don't know why you're having such a problem getting it to run on your system.

Point is I can't do anything on a 7. The interface is way too confusing.

Confusing?  Man, I mastered 7 in less than a week.  Of course, it did help that I did test the W7 Beta before it came out officially, but I didn't use it that much during that Beta period.

[WillWeaverRVA]

Virginia Commonwealth University used Windows XP on a majority of its machines from late 2003 through early this year. It has finally begun upgrading all upgradable computers to Windows 7, and replacing those that can't run Windows 7 with newer ones. Before XP, it used Windows 2000 and Windows Me (yes...) for a while after Windows XP came out.

[J N Winkler]

I'm running FF8 Beta with no problems on my W7 x64 system with no need to use the compatibility mode.  Don't know why you're having such a problem getting it to run on your system.

I haven't even tried to run it--right now I'm running Firefox 7.0.1 (32-bit).  It is what I was offered when I navigated to the "Download Firefox" page soon after I got the new laptop running.  I did know that Firefox 8 (64-bit) is under development and had already reached the beta phase at that point, but Google turns up a lot of palaver about "get it from the Nightly site" and "won't interfere with your stable install," all of which sounds a bit too close to the bleeding edge for my taste.

Confusing?  Man, I mastered 7 in less than a week.  Of course, it did help that I did test the W7 Beta before it came out officially, but I didn't use it that much during that Beta period.

I had basically zero learning curve with Windows 7.  I did read a few Wikipedia articles about how the user interface had changed after I ordered the new computer, and I tried out the new task switcher on a borrowed Windows 7 laptop.  The biggest problems I have had getting used to Windows 7 are Windows Explorer file chooser "gotchas."  In file and folder view in XP, for example, the thing (whether file or folder) that is selected and is deleted when you hit Delete is in dark blue, so there is no ambiguity and you can feel confident about using Shift+Delete to bypass Recycle Bin.  In the same view in Windows 7, both the file and the folder it is in are highlighted in pale blue unless you click on the file or hit Tab to move the focus to the file.  Otherwise, if you hit Delete, Windows 7 attempts to delete the whole folder, not just the file that is highlighted.  I deleted (Shift+Delete) a number of very large folders (one of which had about 14 GB in it) before I wised up--luckily I was able to restore pretty much everything from the backup disk.

On the other hand, with Windows 7 there is less reason to bypass Recycle Bin because it handles complex tree deletes more efficiently.  Move operations are also less likely to be disturbed by active handles, and when a move cannot be completed because a file involved in the move has a file-in-use handle open, Windows 7 suspends the move operation instead of cancelling it altogether so you can just click "Try Again" once you have closed the files that are open.  Batch files with command sequences of the form "rd /s /q X & md X" are occasionally problematic, however--run one of them and about one-third of the time you get an "Access denied" message when you click on or try to open X (which should always be empty after such a command sequence executes).  Unlocker Assistant is not as vital in Windows 7 as it is with XP but it is still necessary.

[rickmastfan67]

I'm running FF8 Beta with no problems on my W7 x64 system with no need to use the compatibility mode.  Don't know why you're having such a problem getting it to run on your system.

I haven't even tried to run it--right now I'm running Firefox 7.0.1 (32-bit).  It is what I was offered when I navigated to the "Download Firefox" page soon after I got the new laptop running.  I did know that Firefox 8 (64-bit) is under development and had already reached the beta phase at that point, but Google turns up a lot of palaver about "get it from the Nightly site" and "won't interfere with your stable install," all of which sounds a bit too close to the bleeding edge for my taste.

Well, I have both FF 7.0.1 and FF 8beta install on my system.  It's true you can't run both at the same time (example, if you have 8 running and then want to start 7.0.1, it will just open a new tab in 8).  Also, you could always run different profiles for each version.

Code Select Expand

firefox.exe -P
Run that in the "Run" command (or in the search bar in the Start Menu) and you can switch between profiles with ease (you have to first shut down FF to change profiles).

And here's where to get the "Beta": http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/
I've been pretty much running the "Beta" builds since 7 came out in it.

And yes, I'm running the 32bit FF in W7 x64 with no problems what so ever.

[realjd]

I use XP on an older computer and Vista on my newer one, and will soon have to get used to 7 at work.  My reason for disliking Vista is that I can't get older games to even start on it, even in the various compatibility modes, but they run just fine on XP (which is a problem because the newer computer can better handle games than the older one).  Given that there are few new PC games that interest me these days, I will try and keep the older XP computer running as long as possible.

DOS games? Use DosBox: http://www.dosbox.com/

Point is I can't do anything on a 7. The interface is way too confusing.

How so? It's essentially the same as XP only dressed up with pretty transparent effects.

You described it as Mac-like. I use both OSX and Win7 at home regularly, and XP at work. Win7 and XP work pretty much the same while there is a huge UI difference going to OSX (other than the fancy visuals on OSX and Win7).