Windows Xp nears End Of Life (THANK GOD!) Zero Day Forever April 8 2014

[formulanone]

...and requires a digital antenna (semi-subsidized as it may be)

There is no such thing as a "digital" antenna, its a marketing term.

I meant the converter box, but yes; antennae are all the same.

[Scott5114]

I could see people being happy about the XP phaseout if they work in IT or a related field. It's one fewer OS version to support. Likewise, not having XP means the final death of IE6, which was a major source of headaches for web designers back in the day. It might benefit you by giving your dad a reason to replace his obsolete computer, too, so when he breaks it you don't have to remember commands to fix it from ten years ago.

When XP came out, the twin towers were still standing...do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

[vtk]

do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

Generally speaking, yes. But i didn't get my current computer until 2008; it was my first XP computer, and XP seemed the best windows available at that time. And i do use mostly the same software now as i did then, in many cases the same versions even.

[J N Winkler]

When XP came out, the twin towers were still standing...do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

It's an interesting question.  In my case, I have all of the major software packages installed that I did in 2001, but the versions are not always the same (for example, Microsoft Office 2000 Professional would not install on my present Windows 7 computer using any of the compatibility modes available to me).  The task mix is also very different.  In 2001 I was doing a lot of picture editing in Photoshop and writing in Word; now I do a lot more scripting and reviewing in Acrobat.  My general style of using software has changed; in 2001 I went to the Start menu to launch applications, while nowadays I achieve the same almost exclusively by double-clicking on documents in Windows Explorer and letting file associations do the rest.  In 2001 I was a bit more naïve about the possibilities of using Word as a collaborative tool, and was willing to hold my nose against its disadvantages (no explicit markup, poor reflowability of text, etc.) in the interests of using the same major package my colleagues were using.  Now I use LaTeX for general word processing in spite of its disadvantages (no WYSIWYG, dependence on packages which are not necessarily uniformly available and may have versioning issues, etc.) because its principal input is in plain text, not a proprietary format, which maximizes the repurposability of my written work.  I am also much more sophisticated about networking.  In 2001 I used an Ethernet cable to connect my network card to a wall jack, and manually set the parameters for a static IP, subnet mask, and two DNS servers (DHCP was not available at the time; I think the standard existed, but it hadn't been implemented where I was).  In 2013 my computer connects to the Internet through a LAN I designed myself, has SMB folder shares enabled, can function as a server for both VPN and Remote Desktop Connection, and is configured for wake-on-LAN (including boot-on-LAN).  In 2001 I had turned my back on television; in 2013, thanks to VLC and DVD player software, I am reasonably current on movies and TV shows.

[hbelkins]

You can still use XP - just don't go dicking around on the shady sites of the Internet and you won't get a mega virus that eats your harddrive from the inside out.

That's what third-party anti-virus programs like McAfee or Norton are for. As long as they continue to offer updates for XP, then XP users should be OK.

[vdeane]

AV has limited effectiveness though, especially against viruses that are too new to be in the definitions files.  And the first thing most viruses do is tamper with the AV to remain undetected.

As for computer use, my isn't even remotely similar, though it's worth noting that I didn't even have my own computer yet in 2001.  I still remember the program manager from Windows for Workgroups 3.11, though!

[JREwing78]

You can still use XP - just don't go dicking around on the shady sites of the Internet and you won't get a mega virus that eats your harddrive from the inside out.

That's what third-party anti-virus programs like McAfee or Norton are for. As long as they continue to offer updates for XP, then XP users should be OK.

If by "shady" sites, you mean anything with an advertisement on it, then I agree. I can't tell you how many computers have come through my shop from viruses people caught by inadvertently clicking a malicious ad that happened to be on Yahoo or MSN or a local newspaper website.

It doesn't matter if third-party anti-virus programs are up to date. In fact, Windows Updates are patching problems in Windows that let malware authors bypass the anti-virus programs altogether. The only thing your anti-virus will do in Windows XP after April is increase your electric bill.

If you like your existing computer and don't want to give Microsoft more money for an upgrade to Windows 7 or 8, it's time to look at one of the many good free Linux options out there, like Mint or Ubuntu. As long as you don't have to run Windows software, it works great!

[Dr Frankenstein]

Antiviruses do their best to stop viruses from progressing after they've entered through holes in the OS that have not been patched. Relying solely on an A/V on an exploitable OS is what I call kludgy. And certainly not 100% effective.

[algorerhythms]

AV has limited effectiveness though, especially against viruses that are too new to be in the definitions files.  And the first thing most viruses do is tamper with the AV to remain undetected.

As for computer use, my isn't even remotely similar, though it's worth noting that I didn't even have my own computer yet in 2001.  I still remember the program manager from Windows for Workgroups 3.11, though!

Windows XP still had the Program Manager, up until SP3 removed it.

[J N Winkler]

Personally, I wouldn't worry about using an XP computer after next April, even on the Internet, as long as it is not the user's primary computer.  And yes, using antivirus software to cover the holes in an unupdated OS is a kludge at best, but it is possible to shave the risk still further by using Firefox with the Adblocker Plus plugin, by installing an ad-blocking HOSTS file (I am a fan of the one offered by MVPS.org), and by setting the email client to display incoming email only as plain text if it is necessary to use an email client at all.

[Duke87]

When XP came out, the twin towers were still standing

Not quite, it wasn't fully released until October 2001.

do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

Most certainly not, although for me we're talking about the difference between a 25 year old and a 13 year old, so it isn't really a fair comparison.

[bugo]

When XP came out, the twin towers were still standing...do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

Basically yes.  IRC has been replaced by various chatrooms, several different web browsers were used, and I have a laptop now which is very handy but I pretty much do the same things I did back then: listen to music, use the internet, check email, use AIM and other programs, and (rarely) watch videos.

[ZLoth]

As of today, Windows XP has 99 days left before End-Of-Life as declared by Microsoft.

[Scott5114]

When XP came out, the twin towers were still standing...do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

Basically yes.  IRC has been replaced by various chatrooms, several different web browsers were used, and I have a laptop now which is very handy but I pretty much do the same things I did back then: listen to music, use the internet, check email, use AIM and other programs, and (rarely) watch videos.

You have replaced a plain all-text protocol with several other protocols, most of which probably support sending and receiving rich content. You have switched between different browsers, which probably support more and more standards and web applications (did the browser you were using in 2001 support have native SVG support? did it support the kind of AJAX applications that we have today?) Your music in 2001 was probably stored in lower-quality formats than you would store them in today. Your internet is probably much faster now than it was then.

So while you are basically doing the same tasks, the answer to the question is probably no, unless you just really have an affinity for software written during Bush's first term of office.

[bugo]

When XP came out, the twin towers were still standing...do you still use your computer for the same things now that you did in 2001?

Basically yes.  IRC has been replaced by various chatrooms, several different web browsers were used, and I have a laptop now which is very handy but I pretty much do the same things I did back then: listen to music, use the internet, check email, use AIM and other programs, and (rarely) watch videos.

You have replaced a plain all-text protocol with several other protocols, most of which probably support sending and receiving rich content. You have switched between different browsers, which probably support more and more standards and web applications (did the browser you were using in 2001 support have native SVG support? did it support the kind of AJAX applications that we have today?) Your music in 2001 was probably stored in lower-quality formats than you would store them in today. Your internet is probably much faster now than it was then.

So while you are basically doing the same tasks, the answer to the question is probably no, unless you just really have an affinity for software written during Bush's first term of office.

Bloatware.

[Scott5114]

Hey, you're the one that stopped using IRC and switched browsers...

[bugo]

But I basically do the same things except I watch videos occasionally.  I no longer use mIRC because the chatroom I went to abandoned the protocol.  Are computers and operating systems and applications now really that much better than they were back then?  I see more bloat than I see real improvement.

[vtk]

The main reason I'm rarely on IRC anymore is lack of free time. There are a few channels today (mostly related to open-source projects) I'd like to be a "regular" in if sitting at the computer all day (or even the same time every day) were practical.  The protocol is certainly not dead.

[Scott5114]

I can't speak all that much for Windows, since I haven't used it as my primary OS since 2005, but Linux has certainly seen a markedly large improvement since 2005, especially in terms of hardware support and ease of software installation and upgrades (yum/apt, the 'app store' before there was such a thing).

When I do use Windows 7, I have noticed that it gets on my nerves less than Windows XP (less focus stealing, for example). I have only used Windows 8 to run a specific application on a tablet, but in my experience it isn't really as bad as it's made out to be.

One thing that I do know is that browsers are totally different–IE6, which shipped with Windows XP, only supported one page per window (no tabbed browsing!), transparent PNGs were rendered with a gray background, and SVGs could only be displayed with a plug-in. Not to mention all the things that are possible now with HTML5 that weren't doable back then...

[vtk]

One thing that I do know is that browsers are totally different–IE6, which shipped with Windows XP, only supported one page per window (no tabbed browsing!), transparent PNGs were rendered with a gray background, and SVGs could only be displayed with a plug-in. Not to mention all the things that are possible now with HTML5 that weren't doable back then...

That's why people upgrade their browsers – the software responsible for a single function of the computer.  None of these features require any change to the OS – changing the OS has impacts on all functions of the computer.  And these impacts can't be guaranteed to all be positive.

[J N Winkler]

Are computers and operating systems and applications now really that much better than they were back then?  I see more bloat than I see real improvement.

I struggle to think of an OS-related feature in Windows 7 I use regularly that is not available in Windows XP.  The only thing that comes to mind is robocopy, which Windows 7 ships with but which has to be specially installed on XP; plus, the version that 7 ships with is more advanced and can be run with a /dst flag that allows it to ignore source/destination date and time differences which are entirely due to a daylight saving time change.

For Windows 98 versus XP, the story is different.  98 didn't support a lot of things that are now part of day-to-day life with XP, such as WPA wireless encryption, NT batch (it had DOS batch instead, with a somewhat different and less capable command set), etc.

In regard to Scott5411's comments regarding Ajax etc., I feel that is very much a mixed blessing.  Most of my nuts and bolts experience with website design these days is in connection with collecting construction plans from state DOT sites, and I have noticed that for many DOTs, Ajax and its cousins (like Prado) are critical to the electronic database management systems they use to overcome the scale issues that result from making enormous quantities of information available over the Web.  (One example of such an issue:  one state DOT used to allow you to download a directory listing with one link for every single project that DOT had scanned and put online.  Just retrieving this directory listing, which had many thousands of lines and ran into the megabytes, was often enough to overload the server and pull it offline.)  The flip side is that Ajax does not come out of the box with support for data scraping.  This means that a decision on a DOT's part to use an Ajax-driven platform for plans distribution amounts to asking the end user to be a "click monkey," clicking once, twice, or even three or four times on every single file in order to download it.  Realistically, the only way around this problem is for a savvy user to sit down with Fiddler (or Wireshark as appropriate) and write wget wrapper code to automate plans retrieval, at a typical cost of about 8 hours of coding time per DOT.  It takes accretive learning over a long period (or focused study over a rather shorter time) to pick up the know-how to finish such coding jobs that quickly.

[bugo]

Windows 9x was unstable because of the DOS connection and the complex memory system.  XP wasn't tethered to those limitations like 9x was.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

Windows 9x was unstable because of the DOS connection and the complex memory system.  XP wasn't tethered to those limitations like 9x was.

95 was still in the relative infancy of graphical desktop environments.  By 98 SE it had been made pretty solid.  ME was a flop, downright terrible.

XP was perceived to be more reliable because you didn't see the BSoD as often.  One thing XP did like to do, however, was reboot itself instantaneously for no apparent reason - what was actually happening was a BSoD, but MS programmed it to automatically reboot, rather than waiting for you to press a key to initiate it.  Usually you didn't see it - but depending on how much of the memory was in use, the crash dump would sometimes take just long enough for you to see the blue screen flash before it rebooted.  The only time a blue screen stayed up in XP or later was when the computer totally locked up during the crash dump, and thusly could not execute the automatic reboot, at which point you had to reach for the reset button.

As for Linux, I'm about ready to not look back.  My next computer will be grossly overbuilt on purpose, so I can run Linux (probably Ubuntu) as the primary OS, and run Windows in a VM with large reserves for anything that is Windows-only that won't work under WINE.

I am currently posting from a 2,1 Macbook that I resurrected.  I got it for free, it came to me with a bad hard drive.  Upgraded it from the 1GB of RAM it came with to 4GB (3GB usable) and instaled Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it.  This thing gives my current desktop a VERY good run for its money, and it's six years old, with a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo (dual-core, as the name would suggest) and only 3 usable gigs of RAM.

The desktop, for comparison, is 3 years newer, with an AMD quad-core 3GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM, all of which is usable.  Using the same OS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, like applications load in about the same amount of time on both systems, but graphics are snappier on the desktop.  No surprise there, as laptops are usually lacking in the graphics area, and the desktop has a nVidia GTX 460 graphics card.

[bugo]

I don't think my computer experience has improved much since I first started using XP.  7 is nice, but not really much of an improvement.  I don't use Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger much anymore, and I rarely use AIM these days, but none of those programs have been significantly improved. 

[Stratuscaster]

IMHO, Microsoft should repackage XP with all the existing updates since SP3 and make it available at $29.99 or less. Only paid support - all other support would be what is accessible online. No feature add - just security code maintenance.

And if MS won't do it, spin it off or sell it to someone that will.