Why do you still use Windows XP?

[Industrial One]

Give your reasons.

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

What will you do when support is dropped to the point where this OS
will be problematic with new hardware?

Personally I'm waiting for Windows 8 to release a second service pack.
XP sucked when it first came out until SP1. Even then, I find the
moron-babysitting idiot trend really annoying. It took me forever to
figure out how to shut off that piece of shit UAC on Win7 because
simply disabling it didn't work, it had to enabled then disabled to be
disabled for real. Sigh...

 

[Char Jackson]

Give your reasons.

Partly because I'm too lazy to upgrade systems that currently work
perfectly well for their intended purpose, but mostly because the
arrival of a new OS on the market isn't a good enough reason to
upgrade.

I have 3 systems running Windows 7 and 3 systems running XP, and I'll
upgrade these last 3 systems when I need to. For these 3, that time
hasn't come yet.

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

Absolutely. Once the time comes to upgrade, why hang onto an old OS?
The key, though, is to know when it's time to upgrade. That's
different for many of us, as it should be.

What will you do when support is dropped to the point where this OS
will be problematic with new hardware?

I'll upgrade without hesitation. I totally don't understand the
thinking behind trying to hang onto an old OS years after support has
ended, referring specifically to anything before XP. I know of a few
people still struggling along with ME, 98SE, 98, and even 95, amazing
and silly as that may sound.

Personally I'm waiting for Windows 8 to release a second service pack.
XP sucked when it first came out until SP1. Even then, I find the
moron-babysitting idiot trend really annoying. It took me forever to
figure out how to shut off that piece of shit UAC on Win7 because
simply disabling it didn't work, it had to enabled then disabled to be
disabled for real. Sigh...

It took me way less than a minute to figure out how to disable UAC,
and I didn't have to jump through the hoop you mentioned. Still, I
think most people should leave it enabled.

 

[Paul]

Give your reasons.

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

What will you do when support is dropped to the point where this OS
will be problematic with new hardware?

Personally I'm waiting for Windows 8 to release a second service pack.
XP sucked when it first came out until SP1. Even then, I find the
moron-babysitting idiot trend really annoying. It took me forever to
figure out how to shut off that piece of shit UAC on Win7 because
simply disabling it didn't work, it had to enabled then disabled to be
disabled for real. Sigh...

Went from Win2K to WinXP, when new 3D games installers would
no longer install into Win2K.

The thing is, Win2K has all the modern features of WinXP, so
from a "harvesting hardware" perspective, it was good enough
(even if it had a two core limit, by license).

I find Windows 7 visually hard to look at. (My eyesight isn't
very good.) Windows 8 looks a bit better in that regard. But
Windows 8 will have so much baggage, I'm not interested. It's
getting perilously close to the "walled garden" concept that
is so popular. No "walled gardens" (App Stores) or "clouds"
for me thanks.

"Windows 8 App Store Gets Gaming Launch Titles"
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399930,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121

"Microsoft Confirms Windows 8 App Store"
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/18/microsoft-confirms-windows-8-app-store/

Copies locked to PCs, no physical media, DRM to keep you in line.
And the same goes to "gating" developers on the other end of the system.

I'd stick with Windows 7 if I were you. Unless you like that
App Store crap.

You can't even get a decent dump out of Windows 8, when
some software croaks. And when I saw that, I realized
just how much control they planned to have over their
new OS and "ecosystem". Why do you need crash info, when
you don't "own" anything ???

Paul

 

[Mayayana]

| Give your reasons.
|

Because 98SE won't run on my current hardware. Actually,
once I got onto XP I found it notably more efficient than
98 on the same hardware, but it took some getting used to
the bloat and "brittleness". I spent about two weeks figuring
out the differences and figuring out how to clean up XP.
(By brittleness I mean the susceptibility, which increases
with each Windows version, to losing the whole system due
to relatively small things like a disabled service or a new
motherboard. 98 crashed more, but it was very rare that one
couldn't get out of a bad boot.)

| Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?
|

That sounds like one of those people who plans when they'll
buy a new car. They don't wait until the old one dies. They
only wait until their current car no longer impresses the
neighbors.

I don't "plan" to upgrade. I buy a new one when the old one
is no longer usable.

 

[Nil]

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

I'm already running Windows 7 and Vista on other computers in the
house. When my main computer needs replacing, or when I find a software
package that requires something later than XP - then I'll consider
mothballing XP. Until then my main computer works well and can do
everything I want it to, so I'm in no hurry to upgrade it.

Personally I'm waiting for Windows 8 to release a second service
pack.

What are you talking about? Windows 8 is only available as a
"developer's preview" which is incomplete and barely workable. It's so
raw that nobody should be using it in a production setting. I don't
believe it's at the Service Pack stage yet.

XP sucked when it first came out until SP1. Even then, I
find the moron-babysitting idiot trend really annoying. It took me
forever to figure out how to shut off that piece of shit UAC on
Win7 because simply disabling it didn't work, it had to enabled
then disabled to be disabled for real. Sigh...

I've turned UAC off and on a number of times. I never had to "enable
then disable it." I leave it on the family workstations now and I
barely notice it. I might turn it off my own computer that I worked at
day to day.

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Industrial One:

Give your reasons.

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

XP works for me, I have close to a dozen licenses via MSDN, and
every time MS brings out a new Windows they move the furniture
around.

A few man hours just for me plus the hassle of switching
back-and-forth on different PCs is no big deal, I guess... but
for a corporation with 20,000 employees who are dropping the same
amount of time just because MS moved the furniture around - that
seems to me like a beeeeeg deal.

If I were MS, I'd have a committee that had to listen to the
reason for every change in the UI on a new Windows - and either
approve or deny it.

I've got 7 on a couple of PCs where it was part of the PC
purchase. Can't say I dislike it... but they *have* moved
furniture around - seemingly for no reason at all - and I can't
see that it does anything for me that XP does not, except for
being a little more network-friendly in a new PC being able to
acquire my NAS box without having it's WorkGroup set to the same
as my home workgroup.

I'll dump XP when I have to - and no sooner.

 

[Mayayana]

| Copies locked to PCs, no physical media, DRM to keep you in line.
| And the same goes to "gating" developers on the other end of the system.
|

On the bright side, or at least the slightly less
dim side, MS seems to be splitting the whole
thing into two: On basic Win8 MS has announced that
they intend for anything that runs on XP to run on
Win8. On Metro it will be the opposite; only sandboxed,
webby trinkets running on top of WinRT, approved by
MS, and sold through the MS Store, with MS taking a
cut, will be allowed.

Currently they seem to be taking the approach of
"deprecating" PC functionality. They're removing the
Start button (and maybe the Start Menu?) and calling
it "old technology". The idea is that people will
toggle back and forth between PC and Metro, but only
losers (as defined by the MS marketing team) will use
the PC side.

So the idea seems to be that they'll try to sell home
customers on Microsoft Web TV, convincing the public
that PCs are outdated, while distributing the usual "secret
tweaks" to corporate customers, so that people can still
use the Windows OS to do PC work.

One point of encouragement, to my mind, is that the
Microsofties tend to create products based on what
they think could make money, rather than on what people
need. So most of the monstrosities they come out with
fail. Active Desktop, Hailstorm, STOP watches, Windows
Marketplace. ...Time after time they try to make a quick
buck by marketing tasteless exploitation as a shiny new
product. Time after time it fails. Metro is so glaringly
inappropriate for PCs that it's likely to end up in whatever
flim flam heaven the Channel Bar went to. (Remember that?
MS sold corporate ad space on the Desktop to Disney and
others, then invited people to add more ads themselves,
calling the ads "channels"! That was supposed to be the
cutting edge proof that Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer "grokked
the Web".

I'm thinking the hot thing next year will be stock in
drug companies that make liniment. With all those elderly
people holding their arms in the air to swipe their 20"
screens, in order to operate their Metro Youtube web app,
there are going to be a lot of sore shoulders.

 

[Stefan Patric]

Give your reasons.

If it ain't broke . . .

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

No. I don't "plan" such things. When XP fails to meet my needs (or just
irreparably breaks), then I'll decide. However, the way Windows has been
evolving (or de-evolving) I may just abandon it all together. Mostly,
have anyway like with DOS and AmigaOS.

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

Never used Vista, an abominable, bloated beast; or W7, its corpulent
bastard child.

What will you do when support is dropped to the point where this OS will
be problematic with new hardware?

What else? Keep running it on the OLD hardware just like I'm doing with
W2k on an 11 year old Thinkpad 240X.

Stef

 

[Char Jackson]

The cloud/walled garden thing is what bothers me. It was never really so much
what OS we choose, but why we choose it. Choose one to live by, is my advice.
Make it home. Otherwise it will always someone else's home.

I think you're in the tiny minority, though. Most people use
applications, not an OS, so endless OS customizing isn't something
most people are interested in. Does it do what they need? If so, then
they use it and move on. Most people I deal with couldn't care less
which version of Windows is running, as long as they can do what they
want to do, such as get their email and Facebook updates.

IMHO, of course, based on what I see.

 

[Char Jackson]

That's true. It's still a problem though. I'm ignorant too, I didn't know
much about how different the way NT kernel OS's access disks was from how W9X
does it. I mean, like many of us I knew that W9X does it the same way real
mode DOS does it, but how many knew about thunking (the conversion between
16 bit and 32 bit code), and the different API calls needed to do the
simplest disk accesses depending on which OS is used?

The typical user, the average user, doesn't need to know the first
thing about disk access, so that probably isn't a great example. In
fact, I don't know what you were trying to point out there.

My point there is that it all takes work. Underneath it all, the average
office user is having to upgrade again and again just to stay where they want
to be!

That's actually not true, at least in my experience. Plenty of office
users around my area are still using W2k and XP, I'd say a large
majority, quite a few years after Vista and 7 have been released. In
the same way, lots of those same users are using Office 97, 2000,
2003, and 2007 without any pressing need to upgrade to Office 2010. In
the browser space, IE seems to rule the office rather than its
competitors, and IE6 is what I mostly see. Look how long ago that
relic was obsoleted, and yet it's still in wide use, partly because
internal IT teams have coded something that requires it.

 

[Todd]

Give your reasons.

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

What will you do when support is dropped to the point where this OS
will be problematic with new hardware?

Personally I'm waiting for Windows 8 to release a second service pack.
XP sucked when it first came out until SP1. Even then, I find the
moron-babysitting idiot trend really annoying. It took me forever to
figure out how to shut off that piece of shit UAC on Win7 because
simply disabling it didn't work, it had to enabled then disabled to be
disabled for real. Sigh...

Are you bored?

http://policelink.monster.com/nfs/p.../0000/6031/Troll_Spary_max192w.JPG?1202766315

 

[Char Jackson]

Good. Just means they ARE digging their heels in. Not that many firms can
upgrade whenever M$ insists on it.

Not at all. Businesses upgrade when it makes sense for them to do so.
There's no digging in heels, nor is there any Microsoft insistence.
Tech refresh usually happens on a semi-fixed cycle, but it varies
based on the costs to refresh versus the costs to maintain the status
quo. Costs in this case aren't limited to dollars.

 

[Char Jackson]

Their ignorance costs. Every time the underlying OS changes methods to access
files and hardware, someone has to write that new code. Not knowing this
doesn't make the problem go away. It just puts the burden on others.

We're not talking about developers, we're talking about users. As
users, people don't need to know the first thing about APIs and disk
access methods. Do you have a better example to illustrate the point
you're trying to make?

BTW, have you noticed that each of your posts includes multiple
paragraphs of unrelated ranting? I snip it, of course, but I'm
curious. What's that all about?

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per BeeJ:

Windows in general is NOT ergonomic and MS is inconsistent from Windows
to its own apps like those in office.

Seems to me like it's getting worse.

Among the people I've been serving, there are those who say "Hey,
if this new solution involves Office 2007, just forget about it."

These are highly-skilled, really-smart, highly-paid people in the
financial industry who live and die by hundredths of a percent on
investment returns.

Office 2003 is doing the job for them and they just don't have
time to cope with mess that MS made out of the UIs in Office
2007. Yeah, it's ok once you reprogram your lower brain stem to
beat through all the new menus.... but they don't feel like they
have that time to invest for no particular benefit.

 

[Char Jackson]

Per BeeJ:

Seems to me like it's getting worse.

Among the people I've been serving, there are those who say "Hey,
if this new solution involves Office 2007, just forget about it."

These are highly-skilled, really-smart, highly-paid people in the
financial industry who live and die by hundredths of a percent on
investment returns.

Office 2003 is doing the job for them and they just don't have
time to cope with mess that MS made out of the UIs in Office
2007. Yeah, it's ok once you reprogram your lower brain stem to
beat through all the new menus.... but they don't feel like they
have that time to invest for no particular benefit.

I felt the same way until I consulted at a company last summer where
they used Office 2010. I groaned when I saw it, but I was productive
within 5 minutes and fully comfortable within 15. Absolutely not the
big deal that I told myself it would be. Disappointing, actually, to
think how small the speed bump was.

 

[Mayayana]

| >Win8 adds another crap layer that should be left to a phone.
|
| I've not seen it yet. AFAIK, it's not on general release (meaning in
| high/main street computer stores).

There's been a lot of information and there's a
developer preview available. There was an interesting
post yesterday by the man in charge of Windows:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/...ndows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx

It is, indeed, a layer of crap. (WinRT) More to the
point, it's a layer of lockdown. Microsoft is using the
excuse of tablets, phones and ARM processors to
introduce their most daring attempt ever at locking
down Windows and selling the whole thing as a
locked entertainment appliance.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I felt the same way until I consulted at a company last summer where
they used Office 2010. I groaned when I saw it, but I was productive
within 5 minutes and fully comfortable within 15. Absolutely not the
big deal that I told myself it would be. Disappointing, actually, to
think how small the speed bump was.

I wasn't, and still am not, crazy about the ribbon. I greatly prefer
the simple, standard menus. But like you, it didn't take me very long
to get accustomed to it. Am I fully comfortable with it? No, not
really; I still occasionally have to hunt within it for what I want.

But I should say that I don't use Microsoft Office a lot. The only
programs in it I use substantially are Outlook 2010 and One-Note 2010.
I use Excel a little, and PowerPoint even less. But I don't use Word
at all; I greatly prefer WordPerfect.
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

 

[Paul]

In message <[email protected]>, BeeJ


I've not seen it yet. AFAIK, it's not on general release (meaning in
high/main street computer stores).

The Windows 8 Preview was available for download. With that,
you could install and test Windows 8 (without the thing being
feature complete). It allows you to see the "phone" interface.
Unlike Ubuntu Unity, at least you can escape to more familiar
things when you want.

It's a Developer Preview, giving developers a chance to see
how their code is going to run in Windows 8, and give them a
chance to tweak for the Metro interface look and feel.

The only thing I found noteworthy about Windows 8, was the
minimum amount of memory it can be run in. Using a Virtual Machine
for testing, I dialed the available memory down to 128MB, and
the Preview continued to run with that amount of memory.
Microsoft is working on that aspect, so the OS can run on
more portable devices. The only problem I had at 128MB, is
a crash in one application, just as I was shutting down the
OS.

If you preview in a Virtual Machine that lacks good graphics
emulation, some of the animations don't work. To evaluate the
animations fully, you need to install on a real physical computer.

I think I couldn't get it to run in VPC2007 (and that fact was
announced at the time), but it did run in VirtualBox. So it's not
even completely VM friendly, for the preview version I was using.

When something crashes in Windows 8, the familiar BSOD or dialogs
with hex in them, have been removed. (Everything has that "plastic look".)
I presume with enough work, I'd eventually be able to figure out,
where the real crash info is stored. I had a few instances, where
the screen was entirely black, and it's pretty hard to debug something,
without a dump on the screen to look at.

If you use Virtualbox for testing, the idea is to not get too
creative with changing the hardware emulation settings. Part
of my black screens and the like, were due to being a bit
too clever with the hardware emulation. Virtualbox has a number
of settings in that regard (it's a bit more of a pain to set up,
compared to VPC2007).

The reason for using VMs, is to avoid disconnecting all disks
while installing the OS. For safety, when installing OSes
on my computer, I unplug any non-involved hard drives. And to
avoid that kind of thing, for junk-type testing, I use a VM instead.
(I've tested and discarded, many Linux distros, just by looking
at them in a VM.) The OS can't "escape" from there, and do some
collateral damage. OS installers are not to be trusted.

Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

In message <[email protected]>, BeeJ

Apps are designed to have to switch back and forth from mouse to
keyboard. Not ergonomic. MS has no quality control and no ergonomic
design.

(Mind you, a lot of users of common software switch back and forth far
more than they need to - for example, typing into a form, they mouse to
the next box, rather than tab. And then mouse to the OK button rather
than enter. Apps may be a bit more mouse-minded - I haven't got any. [I
dislike the word for a start.])

We mostly take proper tab order for granted. It's one of those things
we've all come to expect in the software we use. That's why it was so
irritating to use a program called The Rename v1.4, a file renaming
program that I grew accustomed to using for a few years. Pressing tab
would take you all over the UI in no predictable order. Even after two
years or more, I never learned where tab would take me. Other than
that freak of nature, which I otherwise liked for its simplicity, tab
is usually a better way to move through a form than clicking.

 

[David H. Lipman]

The Windows 8 Preview was available for download. With that,
you could install and test Windows 8 (without the thing being
feature complete). It allows you to see the "phone" interface.
Unlike Ubuntu Unity, at least you can escape to more familiar
things when you want.

It's a Developer Preview, giving developers a chance to see
how their code is going to run in Windows 8, and give them a
chance to tweak for the Metro interface look and feel.

The only thing I found noteworthy about Windows 8, was the
minimum amount of memory it can be run in. Using a Virtual Machine
for testing, I dialed the available memory down to 128MB, and
the Preview continued to run with that amount of memory.
Microsoft is working on that aspect, so the OS can run on
more portable devices. The only problem I had at 128MB, is
a crash in one application, just as I was shutting down the
OS.

If you preview in a Virtual Machine that lacks good graphics
emulation, some of the animations don't work. To evaluate the
animations fully, you need to install on a real physical computer.

I think I couldn't get it to run in VPC2007 (and that fact was
announced at the time), but it did run in VirtualBox. So it's not
even completely VM friendly, for the preview version I was using.

When something crashes in Windows 8, the familiar BSOD or dialogs
with hex in them, have been removed. (Everything has that "plastic look".)
I presume with enough work, I'd eventually be able to figure out,
where the real crash info is stored. I had a few instances, where
the screen was entirely black, and it's pretty hard to debug something,
without a dump on the screen to look at.

If you use Virtualbox for testing, the idea is to not get too
creative with changing the hardware emulation settings. Part
of my black screens and the like, were due to being a bit
too clever with the hardware emulation. Virtualbox has a number
of settings in that regard (it's a bit more of a pain to set up,
compared to VPC2007).

The reason for using VMs, is to avoid disconnecting all disks
while installing the OS. For safety, when installing OSes
on my computer, I unplug any non-involved hard drives. And to
avoid that kind of thing, for junk-type testing, I use a VM instead.
(I've tested and discarded, many Linux distros, just by looking
at them in a VM.) The OS can't "escape" from there, and do some
collateral damage. OS installers are not to be trusted.

This has the 'nix community up in arms (sorrty about the pun) over Win8

"Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices"
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2012/jan/12/microsoft-confirms-UEFI-fears-locks-down-ARM/

"...Microsoft has wasted no time in revising its Windows Hardware Certification
Requirements to effectively ban most alternative operating systems on ARM-based devices
that ship with Windows 8."