XP - Windows 7

[DocHoliday]

The car analogy does not work because iffy brakes are always dangerous whereas using an XP machine offline poses no danger at all.

As McAfee demonstrate, using XP machines protected by an adequate firewall is perfectly safe. At the same time they are correct to advise customers as they do because they can be pretty certain that most customers will not have those levels of security in place.

A car parked on the drive poses no danger at all, which is the equivalent.

So a firewall patches security exploits? Hmmmm. With XP I think I'd want a industrial-strength virus and malware checker as well as that firewall. And maybe a nice friendly server to stop me going to known malware sites. And a manager looking over my shoulder and inspecting my access logs. Yeah, most people don't have all that. So why not take the easy path and upgrade?

 

[DocHoliday]

Mine crashes regularly on certain video files. Loads of other sufferers on the web. The finger points at media player.

Lots of other media players out there. Try VLC, but put your anorak on first.

 

[Reallyretired]

I'm using XP on this laptop. I will do the dual boot as suggested earlier but will wait till I get home (currently in France) in case I totally b*gg*r it.

If people move away from XP it will become less of a target for hackers, as there won't be enough targets to make it worthwhile. I use Win7 at home but it is not as good as XP so hopefully Win9 way be better. Win8 is rubbish and Microsoft have a habit of bringing out alternate good and bad OS so perhaps the next one will be good.

 

[GJH]

A car parked on the drive poses no danger at all, which is the equivalent.

So a firewall patches security exploits? Hmmmm. With XP I think I'd want a industrial-strength virus and malware checker as well as that firewall. And maybe a nice friendly server to stop me going to known malware sites. And a manager looking over my shoulder and inspecting my access logs. Yeah, most people don't have all that. So why not take the easy path and upgrade?

No, a firewall does not patch security exploits but it can trap them before they reach the vulnerable machine (if, indeed, it is actually attached to a network). That, combined with the rest of the post, is the McAfee approach isn't it?

I have an old laptop which runs XP which I keep purely because some software which I use occasionally (and which does not require access to the Internet) will not run on our Windows 7 or 8 machines. When I use it the machine is not connected to our network but is completely stand alone. The software works just as well as it did the day I bought it, ergo nothing is broken and there is no security risk.

A more appropriate analogy than the car is that in my garage I have both a reciprocating saw and a pull saw. Substituting the risk of me being knackered by the effort of using one or the other for Internet security risks it is obviously wiser to use the reciprocating saw when there is a lot of work to do (as a couple of weeks ago when I had a great pile of logs to cut up) but wiser to use the pull saw as when there is far less (as this morning when I had three smallish shrub branches to remove and it would have taken longer to set the reciprocating saw up than to actually do the job). Neither saw is broken but just used as appropriate for the type of tool it is

 

[scotjimland]

I have an old laptop which runs XP which I keep purely because some software which I use occasionally (and which does not require access to the Internet) will not run on our Windows 7 or 8 machines.

Also have disc viewing software that will only run on XP , I did have XP on an old lappy but that is now running Linux Mint

.. so, I have downloaded Windows Virtual PC, onto my desktop, run it in XP mode when required.. it works a treat..

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[DocHoliday]

SNIP Neither saw is broken but just used as appropriate for the type of tool it is

Windows 7 is better, safer saw and it will do both jobs. There is an XP compatibility mode built into 7, and if that doesn't work you can do what ScotJimland does.

You don't even have to pay for 7 if you're willing to break the law.

I'm not against Luddism. I used Win2000 until 2008, which was the first year I used XP. I still have it on my netbook. I built my own desktop to run 7 in 2011, with trepidation having heard the horror stories about Vista, and grew to like it. I avoided 8 but am now going to give 8.1 a try on my new lappy because it's supposed to be a lot less awful than 8. Every upgrade I have made has been well worth it, so far.

 

[greygit]

Windows 7 is better, safer saw and it will do both jobs. There is an XP compatibility mode built into 7, and if that doesn't work you can do what ScotJimland does.

You don't even have to pay for 7 if you're willing to break the law.

I'm not against Luddism. I used Win2000 until 2008, which was the first year I used XP. I still have it on my netbook. I built my own desktop to run 7 in 2011, with trepidation having heard the horror stories about Vista, and grew to like it. I avoided 8 but am now going to give 8.1 a try on my new lappy because it's supposed to be a lot less awful than 8. Every upgrade I have made has been well worth it, so far.

I bought a couple of installation discs and activation numbers off ebay they were for dell machines but I used a windows 7 pro disc I had already to instal the op systems then activated them with the numbers for the Dell ones, perfectly legal.........I hope

I think I paid around £30 each for them.

 

[GJH]

No need for anyone to break the law when they have a perfectly functional machine As far as the OP goes, as the post defines, it is an old machine which is used stand alone so no risk of infecting anything else even if it were to be hit - and no loss either because of its age.

As regards older machines and software, in addition to the XP machine I've also still got machines running Windows 3.11 and Windows 98 up in the loft. They are left over from when we ran our family history business and had to deal with files created years ago using old software - files which could not be read by anything but the old software.

The Luddism comment reminds me of attending a financial software show in 1995 when my employer was thinking of replacing the existing software. One salesman started out by saying that his company found that clients had to replace their software every 3 years at least in order to keep up with changing tax laws and other requirement aspects. My colleague (chief accountant) and I looked at one another in a manner which prompted the salesman to ask how old our system was. He didn't really have an answer when we told him it had been originally implemented in 1978 and that, although it had been migrated from ISAM files onto database architecture when that became available, no logical design changes had been required because the requirements analysis job had been done properly in the first place. In the event the software was only dropped two years later when the mainframe on which it ran was replaced as a consequence of local government reorganisation.

By the way, Jill and I now run laptops using 8.1 and 8 respectively and both prefer it over 7

 

[DocHoliday]

So modest, GJH. I heard you craft your forum posts on a Z80 in assembly language.

 

[GJH]

So modest, GJH. I heard you craft your forum posts on a Z80 in assembly language.

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh. Caught a nerve there did I

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[DocHoliday]

You're clearly finely schooled in the art of Local Government.

 

[GJH]

You're clearly finely schooled in the art of Local Government.

Nothing to be ashamed of.

 

[DocHoliday]

NB: For those installing Mint, you may wish to download the version with the Mate (pronounced like the tea) desktop instead of Cinnamon. The latter can give problems with no hardware graphics acceleration, which makes the system very slow (I had it and you get a warning pop up that software rendering is being employed). It can be solved but the procedure is not for noobs. AFAIK Mate Mint does not suffer that problem.

I had no problem on my netbook, but my desktop running Mint in VMWare Player 6 (the latest) was affected.

 

[scotjimland]

NB: For those installing Mint, you may wish to download the version with the Mate (pronounced like the tea) desktop instead of Cinnamon. The latter can give problems with no hardware graphics acceleration, which makes the system very slow (I had it and you get a warning pop up that software rendering is being employed). It can be solved but the procedure is not for noobs. AFAIK Mate Mint does not suffer that problem.

I had no problem on my netbook, but my desktop running Mint in VMWare Player 6 (the latest) was affected.

Thanks for the heads up..

I was going to download the 64bit version of Cinnamon for my desktop.. will get Mate instead.. cheers.

 

[GJH]

NB: For those installing Mint, you may wish to download the version with the Mate (pronounced like the tea) desktop instead of Cinnamon. The latter can give problems with no hardware graphics acceleration, which makes the system very slow (I had it and you get a warning pop up that software rendering is being employed). It can be solved but the procedure is not for noobs. AFAIK Mate Mint does not suffer that problem.

I had no problem on my netbook, but my desktop running Mint in VMWare Player 6 (the latest) was affected.

Wouldn't be broken at all would it?

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Gellyneck]

I hear Windows 9 is in the offing - anyone know what that's about? I gather that MS are aware of how people still use and enthuse about XP so 9 might be a way to combine its best features with later developments.

Rumour says Win 9 (Threshold) first preview build will be out at the end of this month. Full release in qtr1 2015.

I bought a couple of installation discs and activation numbers off ebay they were for dell machines but I used a windows 7 pro disc I had already to instal the op systems then activated them with the numbers for the Dell ones, perfectly legal.........I hope

I think I paid around £30 each for them.

Believe Dell machines are provided to major business clients with individual copies of Win7 however these clients have volume licensing agreements with Microsoft. Win 7 is installed under these volume licences and the Dell OEM software is "surplus" and sold on.

Is it legal? Without reading the EULA wouldn't know but there are thousands for sale on tinterweb.

 

[Yorick]

R


Believe Dell machines are provided to major business clients with individual copies of Win7 however these clients have volume licensing agreements with Microsoft.

I used to 'buy' and install around 100 machines a year in my previous role at McAfee and they all came as bare-boned machines and I had to install whatever OS was needed.