(PeteCresswell) said:
Per Paul:
If you were building one of these things and had a bunch of 32-bit XP
licenses already on hand (i.e. no cost), would you pay the extra money
to put Windows 7 on it - or would you be happy to stay with XP?
I would be happy to use anything I could get drivers for
Check the motherboard manufacturer web page, for the
availability of WinXP drivers. When next year rolls around,
I am expecting support for that to "drop like a rock".
*******
Nothing "compels" me to use a later OS. The newer ones don't have
any desirable features.
All the OSes have pathological conditions.
On WinXP, I can fork a set of tasks, and get the OS into
such a state, that tasks start dying (when under ideal
conditions, they should remain running). And more tasks
die, than are needed to regain a stable operating
configuration. If I do that on Windows 8, I would
probably not end up seeing that happen. The situation
may be handled slightly better. (Windows 8 seems to
reserved some CPU cycles for stability, so you can't
really drive it to "100%" on purpose.)
But the nice thing about WinXP, is Task Manager tends to
remain in control. The only time I lose control on the
WinXP machine, is when a 3D game blows up. Then there
are no guarantees on the side effects.
In my limited testing on Windows 8 (not an "every day OS"),
I happened to test the situation of "running out of pool memory".
The side effect of that was, Task Manager ended up drawing
35% of CPU, all on its own. It was competing with my
application, for CPU cycles. And, I was not able to use
the Task Manager interface, to kill the offending task
(the one that had leaked pool memory until there was none
left). The controls would not work. I couldn't tab around
or anything. I could not select the offending task and
kill it. The end result was, I had to power cycle the machine.
And this is surely the definition of "fail" in terms of
operation of a modern computer. As a result of this
single test case failure, I would not recommend
Windows 8 to any one. I don't want an OS, with
a brain dead Task Manager. Sorry.
If you want to test that failure case for yourself,
fit a copy of "NeatVideo" filter. It has a pool leak
function, presumably part of demo mode and preventing
people from getting a lot of usage from it. Somewhere
around the 21 hour mark (filtering a video and
computing for 21 hours), my Windows 8 test machine
ran out of Pool, and I could no longer control the
machine.
Stated in other words, in Windows 8, Task Manager is
no longer crafted in a "special way", to always be
in control of the machine. Instead, Task Manager
runs like an "ordinary application", and when the
shit hits the fan, the new Task Manager is in
as much serious trouble, as the applications it is
supposed to be controlling.
How you keep control of things, is by assigning
resources for Task Manager when the system starts up.
So Task Manager can never run out of resources it
might need later. You make your Task Manager rely
on as few things as possible, as those that
the "ordinary applications" are using and sharing.
I can't say whether Windows 7 suffers from this bug.
My Windows 7 machine is gutless enough (single core
processor), I would never do any computationally
demanding stuff on that machine. As a result, I
don't know of any corner cases to watch out for
on Windows 7. I don't have a spare Windows 7 license
to repeat the NeatVideo test with.
*******
Purely in terms of a "dual boot" install sequence,
you could install WinXP first. If you like what
you see, stick with it. If you want to then try
Windows 7, installing the later OS second, allows
automation of the boot menu setup. So it all works
for you, without additional sweat.
Note that Microsoft is using .NET as a "wedge" to
get people to upgrade. And the developers will fall
in line, because the development tools encourage
compiling against the later .NET versions. And
then, if you want to try a new application, while
using WinXP, you'll get a snotty message like
"this application requires .NET 4.0", and when you
go to install .NET 4.0 from Microsoft it will say,
"this version of .NET doesn't run on this OS". I
think to run the trial version of Corel software,
I needed Windows 7 SP1 (non-SP1 wasn't good enough),
just so I could get the damn software to install.
And that's how they'll get you. WinXP may compute
like a champ, but when you need to install a
brand new video editor, you'll in effect be
told to upgrade your OS. It's then your "choice",
as to what to do.
Paul