XP Gone After June 30

[Boris]

Anyone thinking of purchasing a retail copy of XP before it disappears
from the shelves, or is no longer shipped by OEMs after June 30?

Just wondering. I might.

 

[Bob I]

Somebody is going to buy them.

 

[Unknown]

For what reason?

 

[Ridge Runner]

Got the retail price then?

 

[Boris]

Primarily because I like XP better than Vista, and don't want to be
caught without a copy of XP to install on a homebuilt machine.

 

[Boris]

Well, yes.

 

[Unknown]

But, that is a personal like. It should have no effect on others. Vista will
be the OS of the future.

 

[3c273]

Primarily because I like XP better than Vista, and don't want to be
caught without a copy of XP to install on a homebuilt machine.

Are you going to go buy some legacy hardware on which to install it? I may
be wrong but I'm pretty sure most hardware manufacturers are not going to
spend money to develop XP drivers for the next generation of their hardware.
Louis

 

[Anthony Buckland]

For what reason?

Just think about how many people have at various times
sought Win98 after Microsoft stopped all support, let alone
sales. If Boris never finds any other use for it, somebody
is likely to offer quite good money on eBay sometime in the
twenty-teens.

 

[Bill in Co.]

Yup. Already did.

 

[Tecknomage]

Anyone thinking of purchasing a retail copy of XP before it disappears
from the shelves, or is no longer shipped by OEMs after June 30?

Just wondering. I might.

Also of interest is the Support Lifecycle:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&p1=3223&x=14&y=9

and:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps

 

[Unknown]

With over 100 million XPs being used, I doubt Win98 will ever have a value.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Especially since mobo manufacturers are not writing drivers to support Win98
on the new mobos. Nevertheless, Win98 has found new life in my systems as a
guest in VPC.

 

[Bill in Co.]

Still does to me. (Well, not Win98, but Win98SE, anyways).

 

[Bill in Co.]

AND you can still get good motherboards on eBay that work fine with Win98SE
for a second computer.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

But why buy hardware when you can run Win98SE in a virtual machine at no
additional expense at all? It runs flat out fast that way on my systems.

 

[Bill in Co.]

True. But, in my case, I already have a second computer (with Win98SE),
and since I just replaced the MB, that just came to mind.

As for the virtual machine, I expect that may at least have some overhead,
and, as another potential drawback, not be able to run in real DOS mode, if
desired.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

What kind of overhead? VPC is not an emulator if that's what you are
thinking.

Why wouldn't you be able to run in real DOS mode? You create a virtual
machine and install an OS. I have created MSDOS 6.22 virtual machines.

 

[Bill in Co.]

What kind of overhead? VPC is not an emulator if that's what you are
thinking.

No, but since it is a "virtual" PC, presumably there is some system
overhead.
Well, I already know there is, in that you need extra RAM to run it, because
at least some of XP and its system files must be resident in memory, too.

Why wouldn't you be able to run in real DOS mode? You create a virtual
machine and install an OS. I have created MSDOS 6.22 virtual machines.

Well, maybe you can then. I haven't tried VPC. But I was under the
impression you'd have to boot up directly in DOS to get real DOS mode.
(Not run it underneath something like VPC (or whatever) loaded into memory,
running in the background, and monitoring all function calls and code
executions).

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You allocate the ram needed from the host's ram. It is like partitioning
the ram. If I am running XP with 512mb I can allocate, say, 128mb for
Win98SE (a generous amount for 98), leaving the host running with 384mb.
VPC itself is an application so the expected resources for an app apply.

I don't think you are visualizing virtualization correctly, though. The
virtual machine is not using anything from the host XP. The entire guest
operating system is in the vm and none of the host XP is in the guest. They
are two separate computers. The guest is a virtual computer, but a complete
computer regardless. The interface to the host system is handled by VPC
without any awareness by the guest OS.