forced to alternative OS

[Linea Recta]

Support for security updates will end march next year I believe.
What alternatives would you suggest for my old PC (below), if I don't want
to buy new hardware?
And, these Windows XP groups will disappear too I suppose?


--
MV

PC
Windows XP Pro SP3 - mobo: Asus P4B266 - cpu: Intel P4 1,6 GHz. - RAM: 1512
MB. - video: Matrox Marvel G450eTV 32 MB. (AGP) - monitor: 19-inch Medion
Akoya MD 20119 - sound: SB Audigy 1394 (PCI) - HD Maxtor 60GB 6L060J3 - HD
Seagate 160GB ST3160215ACE - DVD/CD-ROM: Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1712 -
DVD+RW/+R: LG GSA-H44N - analog: Dynalink Lucent Win Modem 56k6 (PCI) -
printer: HP DeskJet 720C (parallel) - scanner: HP ScanJet 2200C (USB) -
keyb: PS/2 MS Internet Keyboard - mouse: Logitech Pilot Wheel Mouse Optical
(USB) - webcam: Logitech QuickCam Zoom (USB) - removables: Maxtor One Touch
120 GB (USB) - Medion 500 GB (USB) - Iomega ZipDrive 100 (parallel)

Wi-Fi netwerk
Sitecom ADSL2+ Modem/Router 54G Turbo WL-174

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Support for security updates will end march next year I believe.

Close. It will be April 8.

What alternatives would you suggest for my old PC (below), if I don't want
to buy new hardware?

If you don't buy any new hardware, there is no good alternative for
you. At the very least, I would add enough RAM to have at least 2GB
and go to Windows 7 or 8.

And, these Windows XP groups will disappear too I suppose?

No. From the Microsoft standpoint, all newsgroups already
disappeared. But other news servers still carry them and they continue
to live.

 

[Paul]

Close. It will be April 8.

If you don't buy any new hardware, there is no good alternative for
you. At the very least, I would add enough RAM to have at least 2GB
and go to Windows 7 or 8.

No. From the Microsoft standpoint, all newsgroups already
disappeared. But other news servers still carry them and they continue
to live.

The problem with Windows 7 as an option, may be buying a copy.
I wouldn't expect to find any copies around, when people panic
in April 2014

They want you to buy Windows 8, and there are a few hardware
requirements for that. In 2014, you'll be buying 8.1. It'll
still work for 32 bit, if you want. (64 bit OS won't run
16-bit installer code, for the re-installation of ancient
software.)

If you have the patience, you could attempt to install the
Windows 8.1 preview. You could also download a legitimate
Windows 7 RTM DVD and run it, just to get the Upgrade
Advisor to run and have it laugh at your hardware.

To save you some time, there is a Windows 7 upgrade advisor here.
This may need some version of .NET to be installed. Note that
when you click this, the download starts immediately.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-7659-4bd9-9e51-2497c146af15&displayLang=en

The advisor for Windows 8 is here. Click the blue button.
It likely needs an even later version of .NET, just to annoy you.
If it doesn't tell you explicitly what version, you'll be
seeing an "mscoree failure". Unsophisticated code, makes
reference to mscoree.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8

For fun, we can extract a few hardware requirements from here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8

Support for PAE, NX and SSE2 <--- late model P4, not early ones.
You're out of luck on this. Probably
need at least an LGA775 motherboard for
the kind of P4 that would work.
Windows 7 is likely less demanding.

(SLAT) support for Hyper-V <--- A "don't care" requirement

Windows 8.1 needs CMPXCHG16B, which is missing from early AMD64.

"For 64-bit installations of Windows 8.1 Preview, your CPU
must also support CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW and LAHF/SAHF."

So maybe that means a 32 bit CPU wouldn't have those requirements.

For graphics for Windows 7, we could use the Vista spec. It's possible
you might coax a non-Aero mode out of this, not really sure.
The Marvel G450 isn't likely to have the drivers.

DirectX 9.0 capable and WDDM 1.0 driver support
Graphics memory 64MB (or 128 MB helps with compositing)

In general terms, when the upgrade advisor runs on your PC
(whether the Windows 7 advisor or the Windows 8 one), it's not
likely to be too happy.

To make you feel better, of all the PCs in the house, my current
one (Core2) runs Windows 8.1. I have a purchased version of Windows 8
running on it as well. My second-best PC (Core2), the graphics
card needs to be changed. All other PCs, to be tossed into
dumpster :-( The hardware requirement is pretty high for Windows 8,
for no apparently good reason. I guess they just don't
want the business (the extra sales). My laptop came with Windows 7,
so I didn't have to buy that OS outright.

*******

Maybe it'll be time for Linux and WINE. Or perhaps, your
favorite hard liquor.

Note that, even the minimum requirements for Linux are going up.
It's like inflation. A lot of older PCs, will soon not be
running the latest Linux distros. Probably 512MB minimum.
The latest distro I tried (in a VM), the graphics were dog-slow,
which tells me they're attempting to use acceleration for rendering.
And the fallback path, would use software rendering to fake the
acceleration. It was slow running on a 3GHz Core2 (the VM preserves
90% of the speed of the processor).

I think you'll be running WinXP SP3, for some time to come.

Paul

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

Support for security updates will end march next year I believe.
What alternatives would you suggest for my old PC (below), if I don't
want to buy new hardware?
And, these Windows XP groups will disappear too I suppose?

It depends on your risky behavior and how well you know computers.
If you want to minimize risk, I suggest Ubuntu 13.04.

I have not updated this XP3 machine in at least two years.
I don't run any active antivirus either.
This computer never gets any bad things.
I do have two hardware and one software firewalls though.
It's my W7 machine with the latest MSE, or what ever its
called this month, upfront / backend protection, that
is always getting some kind of disease.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The problem with Windows 7 as an option, may be buying a copy.
I wouldn't expect to find any copies around, when people panic
in April 2014

No need to wait until April. You can buy it now, at places like
Amazon.com.

 

[Linea Recta]

Your XP machine will continue running whether you get updates or not so
why do you want to upgrade? I haven't had any updates for my XP for
nearly 18 months and not a single sign of malware, virus or hacker
threats.

I hope you're aware that "user not noticing any threat" proves nothing about
your system being safe :-((



--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Linea Recta]

You already got good answers so I will focus on something else.

Netiquette and RFCs dictate that a signature is what comes after the
signature delimeter "-- "

First of: I complied to that, as you may have noticed.

and that a signature is NO MORE than 4 lines.

What is supposedly a signature is pure noise.

I don't think so. In my O.P. the "signature" contains relevant information.




|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Linea Recta]

The problem with Windows 7 as an option, may be buying a copy.
I wouldn't expect to find any copies around, when people panic
in April 2014

They want you to buy Windows 8, and there are a few hardware
requirements for that. In 2014, you'll be buying 8.1. It'll
still work for 32 bit, if you want. (64 bit OS won't run
16-bit installer code, for the re-installation of ancient
software.)

If you have the patience, you could attempt to install the
Windows 8.1 preview. You could also download a legitimate
Windows 7 RTM DVD and run it, just to get the Upgrade
Advisor to run and have it laugh at your hardware.

To save you some time, there is a Windows 7 upgrade advisor here.
This may need some version of .NET to be installed. Note that
when you click this, the download starts immediately.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-7659-4bd9-9e51-2497c146af15&displayLang=en

The advisor for Windows 8 is here. Click the blue button.
It likely needs an even later version of .NET, just to annoy you.
If it doesn't tell you explicitly what version, you'll be
seeing an "mscoree failure". Unsophisticated code, makes
reference to mscoree.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8

For fun, we can extract a few hardware requirements from here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8

Support for PAE, NX and SSE2 <--- late model P4, not early ones.
You're out of luck on this. Probably
need at least an LGA775 motherboard
for
the kind of P4 that would work.
Windows 7 is likely less demanding.

(SLAT) support for Hyper-V <--- A "don't care" requirement

Windows 8.1 needs CMPXCHG16B, which is missing from early AMD64.

"For 64-bit installations of Windows 8.1 Preview, your CPU
must also support CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW and LAHF/SAHF."

So maybe that means a 32 bit CPU wouldn't have those requirements.

For graphics for Windows 7, we could use the Vista spec. It's possible
you might coax a non-Aero mode out of this, not really sure.
The Marvel G450 isn't likely to have the drivers.

DirectX 9.0 capable and WDDM 1.0 driver support
Graphics memory 64MB (or 128 MB helps with compositing)

In general terms, when the upgrade advisor runs on your PC
(whether the Windows 7 advisor or the Windows 8 one), it's not
likely to be too happy.

To make you feel better, of all the PCs in the house, my current
one (Core2) runs Windows 8.1. I have a purchased version of Windows 8
running on it as well. My second-best PC (Core2), the graphics
card needs to be changed. All other PCs, to be tossed into
dumpster :-( The hardware requirement is pretty high for Windows 8,
for no apparently good reason. I guess they just don't
want the business (the extra sales). My laptop came with Windows 7,
so I didn't have to buy that OS outright.

*******

Maybe it'll be time for Linux and WINE. Or perhaps, your
favorite hard liquor.

Note that, even the minimum requirements for Linux are going up.
It's like inflation. A lot of older PCs, will soon not be
running the latest Linux distros. Probably 512MB minimum.
The latest distro I tried (in a VM), the graphics were dog-slow,
which tells me they're attempting to use acceleration for rendering.
And the fallback path, would use software rendering to fake the
acceleration. It was slow running on a 3GHz Core2 (the VM preserves
90% of the speed of the processor).

I think you'll be running WinXP SP3, for some time to come.

Thanks for your elaborate reply.
I have never looked into linux or wine or any other OS for that matter.
Windows XP(SP3) always worked fine, and I hate being forced to update "for
the sake of everyone else doing so" or for maintaining the market. But
starting from now I still have the time to do some research on alternatives.
I didn't read you mentioning Vista. I have Vista on my notebook. Could this
be an option for the mentioned PC too?
How long will Vista be supported? And how long Windows 7?

These were some preliminary questions but I'll dig further into the
alternatives during spare time.



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Stef]

Support for security updates will end march next year I believe.
What alternatives would you suggest for my old PC (below), if I don't want
to buy new hardware?
And, these Windows XP groups will disappear too I suppose?

Just because Microsoft is dropping support doesn't mean the OS will stop
working. Hell, I'm still using Windows 2000 Pro on an old notebook.
Works fine. Just keep using it until is can no longer do what you need
it to do, then look for a replacement.

The XP news groups will be around for a long time: Many XP hate W7 and
8 and will never upgrade. They'll switch OSes first.

Stef

 

[Paul]

Thanks for your elaborate reply.
I have never looked into linux or wine or any other OS for that matter.
Windows XP(SP3) always worked fine, and I hate being forced to update
"for the sake of everyone else doing so" or for maintaining the market.
But starting from now I still have the time to do some research on
alternatives.
I didn't read you mentioning Vista. I have Vista on my notebook. Could
this be an option for the mentioned PC too?
How long will Vista be supported? And how long Windows 7?

These were some preliminary questions but I'll dig further into the
alternatives during spare time.

I wouldn't have thought any copies of Vista would still
be for sale. Even Windows 7, isn't a sure thing, in terms
of being able to purchase. Corporate users might have better
access than home users.

If you buy a Windows 8 computer (with OEM installation of Windows),
you can get downgrade rights to Windows 7 that way. Which is another
way to get to Windows 7. But there's no guarantee the manufacturer
is going to be helpful. Or make it easy.

And there's a web page somewhere, with the "drop dead" dates
for all the OSes. When support stops.

Paul

 

[Ken Springer]

Support for security updates will end march next year I believe.
What alternatives would you suggest for my old PC (below), if I don't want
to buy new hardware?
And, these Windows XP groups will disappear too I suppose?

Interestingly, when I had a Win98 machine still up and running, with
support "supposedly" long gone, I would get the occasional security
update. I have no idea why, but gut feeling is something similar will
happen with XP. My personal justification for this feeling is the
number of XP users, both corporate and personal, will still be numerous
enough that MS may not want to pi$$ them off.

Regarding Linux, I was going to suggest you look into that as an
alternative, but I see someone else has also suggested that.

What you could do, Linux-wise, is to download and burn the Live CD's
from various distros, and run it from the DVD and RAM. That way you
have time to check things out before being forced into doing something
quickly.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.4
Firefox 22.0
Thunderbird 17.0.7
LibreOffice 4.0.4.2

 

[Paul]

Interestingly, when I had a Win98 machine still up and running, with
support "supposedly" long gone, I would get the occasional security
update. I have no idea why, but gut feeling is something similar will
happen with XP. My personal justification for this feeling is the
number of XP users, both corporate and personal, will still be numerous
enough that MS may not want to pi$$ them off.

Regarding Linux, I was going to suggest you look into that as an
alternative, but I see someone else has also suggested that.

What you could do, Linux-wise, is to download and burn the Live CD's
from various distros, and run it from the DVD and RAM. That way you
have time to check things out before being forced into doing something
quickly.

As the OP has a 1536MB machine, he can run a Linux LiveCD,
with the "TORAM=yes" option, and cache the entire boot CD
into RAM. Which makes for a quieter OS operation, as you
can then eject the CD. Without that, the CD stays in the
drive for the entire session.

I keep a distro on a USB key, which is a lot quieter than
CDs or DVDs. I use a "Lexar Media JumpDrive S73 32 GB" as
the USB key (a waste), but the nice thing is the data rate
is very good with that one. So booting happens reasonably
fast, compared to a CD. Since there is a "persistent store file"
or casper-rw file on there, I'm able to keep file changes
from session to session. And I can plug that into different
computers.

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

First of: I complied to that, as you may have noticed.

I think you might have meant "first off". Well, you might have in a
previous post, but in this one, you did indeed limit yourself to four
lines, but you had no "-- " line.

I don't think so. In my O.P. the "signature" contains relevant information.




|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

4 lines yes - separator line no.

 

[Charlie+]

underneath :

snip

As the OP has a 1536MB machine, he can run a Linux LiveCD,
with the "TORAM=yes" option, and cache the entire boot CD
into RAM. Which makes for a quieter OS operation, as you
can then eject the CD. Without that, the CD stays in the
drive for the entire session.

I keep a distro on a USB key, which is a lot quieter than
CDs or DVDs. I use a "Lexar Media JumpDrive S73 32 GB" as
the USB key (a waste), but the nice thing is the data rate
is very good with that one. So booting happens reasonably
fast, compared to a CD. Since there is a "persistent store file"
or casper-rw file on there, I'm able to keep file changes
from session to session. And I can plug that into different
computers.

Paul

I looked at Linux distros a few years ago and came to the conclusion
that for somone involved in the computer business or maintenance or
infrastructure it wold be invaluable and well worth the considerable
learning curve, in fact probably an essential tool.
But if one is simply a user of computer facility and software
(especially with less 'run of the mill' software and hardware cards)
then it just wasnt worth it. A lot of software and hardware wasnt'
native to Linux and whereas there were work arounds for some or perhaps
most of these things but each one takes time and effort just to get
them running before you can get down to actual work. At that time it
just wasnt worth it in my case, might be better by now but I have
doubts. My impression is that the OP is a user rather than in the
computer industry. C+

 

[Paul]

underneath :

snip

I looked at Linux distros a few years ago and came to the conclusion
that for somone involved in the computer business or maintenance or
infrastructure it wold be invaluable and well worth the considerable
learning curve, in fact probably an essential tool.
But if one is simply a user of computer facility and software
(especially with less 'run of the mill' software and hardware cards)
then it just wasnt worth it. A lot of software and hardware wasnt'
native to Linux and whereas there were work arounds for some or perhaps
most of these things but each one takes time and effort just to get
them running before you can get down to actual work. At that time it
just wasnt worth it in my case, might be better by now but I have
doubts. My impression is that the OP is a user rather than in the
computer industry. C+

Well, the idea was to find options for a P4 1.6GHz.
And not have to buy hardware.

And there aren't really a lot of options available.

I find it a lot of work, to get things working in Linux.
The tiniest problem, takes the whole day to figure out.
They like to move the deck chairs, so if you thought you've
learned something, they've moved the config files once again.
So you're right, it's not an end user OS as such. It's an
OS for tinkerers.

Paul

 

[Linea Recta]

Just because Microsoft is dropping support doesn't mean the OS will stop
working. Hell, I'm still using Windows 2000 Pro on an old notebook.
Works fine. Just keep using it until is can no longer do what you need
it to do, then look for a replacement.

The XP news groups will be around for a long time: Many XP hate W7 and
8 and will never upgrade. They'll switch OSes first.

My question was mainly concerning potential future security issues.


--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Linea Recta]

Interestingly, when I had a Win98 machine still up and running, with
support "supposedly" long gone, I would get the occasional security
update. I have no idea why, but gut feeling is something similar will
happen with XP.

That would be great...

My personal justification for this feeling is the number of XP users, both
corporate and personal, will still be numerous enough that MS may not want
to pi$$ them off.

Regarding Linux, I was going to suggest you look into that as an
alternative, but I see someone else has also suggested that.

What you could do, Linux-wise, is to download and burn the Live CD's from
various distros, and run it from the DVD and RAM. That way you have time
to check things out before being forced into doing something quickly.

Exactly, that's the way to go.



--
thanks,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Linea Recta]

As the OP has a 1536MB machine, he can run a Linux LiveCD,
with the "TORAM=yes" option, and cache the entire boot CD
into RAM. Which makes for a quieter OS operation, as you
can then eject the CD. Without that, the CD stays in the
drive for the entire session.

I keep a distro on a USB key, which is a lot quieter than
CDs or DVDs. I use a "Lexar Media JumpDrive S73 32 GB" as
the USB key (a waste), but the nice thing is the data rate
is very good with that one. So booting happens reasonably
fast, compared to a CD. Since there is a "persistent store file"
or casper-rw file on there, I'm able to keep file changes
from session to session. And I can plug that into different
computers.

One thing I know: my BIOS (latest) does not support booting from USB stick.



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os