Wow.

Well, exxos, I'm not going to start debating Win7 over XP. It's your computer and you can decide what you want to do. If you're happy with it, that's all that matters.
All I'm saying (and I think the rest of the guys) is that XP will not be supported forever. It's already 3 major OS versions behind, a lot more if you also take service releases or Win8.1 into account. Programmers will simply stop caring about maintaining compatibility with something that's on the verge of obsolescence.

On what you said, I haven't found any *bugs* in Windows 7. Just things that it does differently from XP. Obviously, XP will be faster since it's been designed with the hardware available in 2001 in mind; minimum requirements called for a 233MHz CPU (!!!) and 64MB RAM (!!!), so in a computer with 4 cores at 4GHz and 3GB of RAM, it goes without saying that it will fly. That doesn't mean, however, that it is making the best out of the available hardware, or that its thread scheduler is distributing the threads in the most efficient way, nor that its memory subsystem is allocating memory to the processes in the most efficient manner.
Also, since you mentioned games, XP will not support anything beyond DirectX 9, so you won't be using any of the new features of new graphics cards, from 2007 or newer.
Finally, Windows 7 is actually faster in disk accesses and I know that for a fact, since my job around the time Win7 got released was exactly that, I was in charge of the hardware/test labs of a major computer magazine, and we ran extensive tests. As far as contemporary hardware is concerned, Win7 is *almost* the best it gets (with the exception of 6+ core CPUs and Windows 8). Also, XP won't support any of the modern features of solid-state drives, like TRIM.

For the record, I'm not writing all that to change your mind, but for the sake of correctness and for the benefit of other people that might read this thread.
Windows XP is just fine, if someone is only using old programmes, if they're certain that they won't upgrade your PC at all, if they're not playing any games other than those released at least 6 years ago and if they know that even with older versions of programmes, their memory requirements will never exceed the 3GB limit.

It is quite apparent that you've made up your mind and there's nothing anyone can say that will change that.

Exxos, if you check, you will see that I've been a Winstep user since 2009. In some of the posts made it will be evident that I used to have XP. Like you and others, I don't jump at the newest thing just for the sake of being the first on the block. Not until a couple of years after joining this site did I switch to Win7.

If you notice, I didn't say Vista. I felt it was a piece of crap and fortunately wasn't one of the suckers that bought it and held on to my precious XP. There were several reasons why I chose to let XP go and not repair it which was tough because of the capabilities that it had.

First of all, it was a high dollar (TV and recording capability) laptop, so I assume you know the limitations of not being able to upgrade like a desktop. I have thousands of hours of recorded TV shows burned to discs via that laptop. It served me well.

Second, I began to notice problems with it. It was simply getting old (purchased in 2005). It starting crashing because the hard drive was giving out. After all of that, a vertical green line that ran the length of the screen appeared. A contributing factor could have been the advent of HD. Obviously that laptop was not designed to run HD video. It wasn't until a year or two later than the model I had was capable of playing HD files.

Third, I also began to experience serious problems when I tried to view a HD file or watch a HD video on a website. It would buffer and eventually hang. If I tried to watch a HD file on the laptop my CPU and fan would run like mad, it would get unacceptably hot within 2 mins from a dead cold start (would not be on for hours prior) and unless I stopped it within 3 mins the file and laptop would lockup and then shut down. I would have to wait until the laptop got cold again before I could turn it back on.

Fourth, I have only one PC game. Robin Hood The Legend Of Sherwood which is awesome! It runs fine on my Win7 although at first I had problems with it. It was released in 2002 and the graphics can only go up to 1024 x 768 and still displays a message to switch it to 1920 x 1080 . I don't know if the desktop reported to the appropriate servers and they responded, but I noticed that within a day or so after it would crash, an update followed. Eventually it stopped crashing.

EDITED A TYPO IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH. CHANGED LAPTOP TO DESKTOP BECAUSE THE DESKTOP IS WIN7.

Lastly, after all of this, my questions to you is, can you view HD 1080p without any problems? If the answer is yes, then your decision to keep XP seems more reasonable to me. I couldn't live without true HD 1080p capability or whatever higher resolution they may come out with in the next few years. I wouldn't want to get rid of Win7 in the near future because of the same reason I had with XP.

P.S. A while ago I upgraded to a dedicated graphics card & maxed the RAM to 16GB. I haven't looked into it, but I'm wondering if I could tinker with the graphics card settings to see if the graphics for the game could be tweaked to look even better. They look very good as it is, I don't play it often and probably why I haven't taken the time to bother with it.

xp was buggy when it came out and is still buggy. people whine too much about vista and 7. if you can't get either to run stable you are doing something wrong. i'll give the fact that pre sp1 on vista it was not worth the headache. i've heard people talk about xp as if it were the best os microsour ever released, but to be honest those people are delusional.

windy fyi the human eye cannot discern the difference between 10i and 1080p. anyone that tells you different is a lier.

Now, I'm with Chucky on this all the way. XP was definitely NOT the best OS to walk this earth and people just don't know any better. In the beginning, XP was a nightmare; bloated, slow and didn't support anything. I remember at the time I was using Windows 2000 Server and thought XP was a joke. Even after SP1 it was still crap. After SP2 they became more stable and it was then that XP started being worth using. SP3 was too late but a long-overdue overhaul anyway.
And I'm not using the service packs solely as a software, but also as a temporal measure. The time XP was released, the hardware recommended was basically very high-end (and even then they sucked). At SP1 it was more or less the same. After SP2 was released, the hardware they required actually met the average of the hardware in existence and only afterwards did the available hardware actually exceed the requirements of the OS. It was long after SP2 that I decided to abandon my (hard to maintain) 2003 Server and go to XP, and it was only the issues with (non-existent) drivers that made me switch.

However, and that's the main point, you don't run an OS just to look at the desktop. You don't run Windows just to run Windows. You need to run applications of all sorts. So, the OS **has** to be as light-weight as possible, so that at least 95% of the computer's resources and processing power are available for what you actually want it to do! You don't want Windows to consume 35% of your RAM, just for the operating system, and you don't want the OS to use up your CPU or GPU power for crap.
And this is where Microsoft has *always* failed, with the most dismal failure being Vista. Actually, in that respect, Win7 isn't too bad, compared to all the other shite Microsoft has released.
Dare I remember? Windows ME? Windows 95? ...Windows 8??? Ha!

vista post sp1 is great if you really know what you're doing. the problem with vista is that microsour took so long to get sp1 out and soured people on their os's. as for 7 it is great out of the gate.

now as for the winstep products the backwards compatibility really needs to be removed. i'm sure a lot of the bugs that jorge like to swear aren't in winstep are due to his trying to keep the products compatible all the way back to 95. i said it once before i'm with skagon that the code needs to be brought up to date, i however would also add dropping support for the os's before vista.

The whole compatibility thing is really getting on my nerves. Jorge once told me that he actually has paying users that use Win95, 98 and even 2000, so that's why he has to keep compatibility.
However, I honestly fail to see: a. why anybody would use a 19-year-old operating system -- one that is essentially a fancy dress-up of MS-DOS, largely 16-bit and without any real usefulness in real-world conditions, other than using the computer as a glorified typewriter and/or calculator (i.e. Word-Excel) -- and b. why anyone would care about those users; if they haven't updated their damn computer and/or operating system in two decades, why do you think they'd update Winstep?

Perhaps this black-out that Jorge has had, can have one good consequence, a major overhaul of the Winstep code base. Yes, I am very aware that it's a huge undertaking, but one can always dream...

This is a new newsletter from Kim Komando. I think it fits in with the discussion here.


Q. I read in your Breaking News newsletter that Microsoft will no longer be issuing security updates to Windows XP. What does this mean? Will my two XP computers suddenly stop working? What should I do when that happens?

-Greg, from McAllen, TX, listens to my national radio show on KURV 710 AM.

A. I can understand your concern, Greg. Despite being more than a decade old, XP is still the second most-popular operating system around. It was the most popular up until about this time last year when Windows 7 edged it out.

I can understand your concern, Greg. But even though XP is still the second most-popular operating system around, all good things have to come to an end, though.

Microsoft set Windows XP’s end-of-life date for April 8, 2014. After that, Windows XP will ride off into the sunset knowing it changed the computing world forever.

What does that mean for people still using XP, though?

The good news is that your XP computers won’t suddenly stop working, Greg. Any XP computer will still work just the way it did on April 7, 2014. However, I don’t recommend using it anymore.

That’s because Microsoft will no longer update XP’s version of Microsoft Security Essentials. “End of life” means the official end of Microsoft support, including no more updates to the XP version of Microsoft Security Essentials, and updates to customer service.

Simply put, use Windows XP after April 8 and anything you have in the operating system is very vulnerable to malware, viruses, hackers and scammers. Because any security flaws that hackers find won’t be fixed, your computer will be a sitting duck.

If you do use Windows XP after April 2014, it’s basically at your own risk. Having security software installed will help, but it will get more and more dangerous to use as time goes on.

Because I don’t recommend using a Windows XP computer as your main computer after next April, you will want to start using a new operating system. If you plan to stick with Windows, that means upgrading to 7 or 8.

Windows 7 is the closest in look and feel to XP. In fact, it’s shaping up to replace XP as the operating system that people will be using as long as they can.

You’ll discover some differences, of course. This tip will show you a few tricks in Windows 7 that you’ll love.

If you want Windows 7, however, you’re going to have to move fast. Very few new computers have it as an option, and the ability of manufacturers to downgrade from Windows 8 is going away next year.

You could upgrade Windows on your existing computer. However, if your computer is more than three years old, I’d buy a new one. Even today’s budget computers can outperform computers from 2010 and earlier. And, in the case of Windows 8, new computer hardware can take advantage of Windows 8′s new speed and security features.

Find the right computer for you in my laptop and desktop buying guides.

While Windows 8 has its good points, it’s so different from previous versions of Windows that I had to write a whole book on how to use it. You can pick that up here. A Windows 8 update later this year might bring back some familiar elements, like the Start button, but the learning curve is still going to be high.

Either way, don’t worry too much about your old programs. They’ll more than likely all be able to make the jump to a new version of Windows. I’ll help you start transferring them in this must-read tip.

The exception is if you have a version of Office 2003 or older. Those will be out of support at the same time as XP. You’ll want to upgrade or find an alternative.

That brings us to the last thing you need to figure out: what to do with your XP computers? You could sell them to try to make a quick buck or recycle them if you can’t find a price you like.

There are a few repurposing tricks you can try, too. For example, an old computer can make a great DVR with these ideas. You can use this tip to help it turn your HDTV into a smart TV.

If you don’t want to make it a part of your home theater, you have other choices. Some people like to use old computers to practice upgrades or fixing problems. Since you don’t have to worry about breaking it, this could save money in the long run.

You can even keep the computer hooked up to type documents or play games. If you go this route, keep it disconnected from the Internet. Otherwise, a hacker could find a way into your computer and steal some of your information.

Windy, I have to say, some of what he says (I don't know who this Commando guy is) is misleading or purposefully vague. Of course, if he's a pro internet journalist, he has to support the ecosystem around him and make money, so I'm not overly critical; after all, I had to do that as well.

Moving on to the points, let's examine some of them more closely.
True, a new computer can outperform a 4-year-old computer. Duh!
However, how relevant is that performance gap, today? For instance, a 4-year-old PC could have a quad-core AMD Phenom-2 at, say, 3GHz and a Radeon 5000-series. Even a 6-year-old PC would have a Core2 Duo and a GeForce 200-series.
So, how important would the speed differences be, compared to, say, a modern PC with a Core i5 equipped with a Radeon 9000-series?
Answer: not at all.
The "performance" argument is only used by manufacturers to make non-technical users upgrade or buy new PCs. Of course, there are scenarios of "heavy duty" applications that do benefit from the latest and greatest, but people who use them, also know what to upgrade and what benefits they'll get. Average users that only surf the internet and watch movies, listen to music, chat on Skype and, to sum it up, do all the things a casual non-expert user does, replacing a 4-year-old computer with a new one, will see a performance increase of absolutely ZERO.
Of course, comparing apples to apples, they'd need to reinstall their OS, only to get rid of all the cruft and stupid decisions they made during those 4 years. Most of them "simpletons" of the computer age, are even oblivious to the fact that the slowdown of their computer is due to their own bad decisions and programmes they chose to install, and also that a 'clean' installation of Windows can bring their computer back to life.

FUD, I say. Most computers don't even rely on Microsoft's Security Essentials nor Windows' internal firewall, since most come with some security suite pre-installed.
The vulnerability to hackers and scammers is pretty much the same as Windows Vista, 7 or 8. Most attack methods rely on the "human factor" to introduce themselves and, if that happens, it doesn't matter one bit which operating system you use or what updates you have.
Simply put, unless your computer is part of the NORAD network, or NSA, CIA, FBI or some other widely known IP range, nobody will bother hacking your computer, and with most modems' NAT and firewalls, it's near impossible anyway.
Not to mention that it will be an extra incentive for security software vendors to step in and offer increased protection for XP users, covering up the whatever "holes" that *may* exist.
Once again, the biggest threat to anyone's computer security, is the users themselves; and the best line of defence is to... NOT open that "Scarlett Johansson boobs" e-mail attachment.

Seriously... who cares what the "official" Microsoft does? You'll still be able to get Windows 7 from various sources for years to come, just as you can still buy XP licences today. And that's assuming you want to be legit, something which a big percentage of the world's Windows installations is not, but Microsoft is silently "tolerating", simply because it's nice seeing that "90%+ of the world's computers using Windows" in the statistics.

Like I said, you simply keep using them. Try to sell them and you'll see that a LOT of people who know what they're doing, will give you a decent price, simply because a 4-year-old computer, to people that know what's what, is still modern, simply because it can still run everything that a brand new one can, with little difference in performance (3D games, of course, are a different subject).

The rest is pretty much repetitions on the same subject of "OMG keep it disconnected from the bad internet".
Interesting fact: I have a 386 PC (32MB RAM) running Windows NT 3.51 (with Daytona installed ) connected to the internet through a LAN card and using an old-ish Opera browser and no security software whatsoever, and I can tell you... it did NOT get attacked, hacked, infected, commandeered or anything else, even though the OS hasn't been updated since... 1996 or so.

Here is a pic of "that guy". Her name is Kim Komando. http://www.komando.com/tips She is the one responsible for me knowing about Winstep and many other programs I have installed. I'm positive that she led many users here. She's pretty big stuff here in the USA. She has a national radio show that is on over 150 radio stations. Besides computers, she also knows about cameras.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that only a handful of the population has your knowledge about computers. She purposely tries not to get too techy when giving advice because the listeners and readers will just zone out. She tries to keep things simple so that average users can take care of the problem. Visit the link I posted and it will give you a better idea of where she's coming from. There are a ton of programs that she has personally vetted for DL on her site.

BTW, just so you know, she is not a big fan of Win8. She prefers Win7 over 8.

Oh! Wow! Hot momma! I just hope she goes "commando" too!

In any case, I think I got misunderstood. I'm not saying she doesn't know her subject. However, that's common with all "mainstream" journalists, and I'm including myself; when I was working for a very big and well known computer magazine, I had to do the same. Obviously, after being "encouraged" by the editor-in-chief.
It's not that you're being told to lie; however, writing articles where you tell people not to buy new stuff, upgrade their computers, buy new ones et cetera, is not the brightest thing to do. After all, magazines and websites alike, depend on adverts to survive (and subsequently make profit) and telling readers *not* to buy is like shooting yourself in the foot (or head, depending).
So, while I could -- and was encouraged -- to write critical articles about anything (you should have read my "Windows Vista" reviews), also "how-to" articles about keeping your computer in shape or smart ways to make it faster and more efficient were very popular, writing things like "you don't need a new computer, the one you have will do just fine" were not exactly appreciated, if you know what I mean.
Sure, I could (and did) write a lot about how bad Vista was, and would have done the same for Windows 8, but actually explaining that computers of the last 10 years, hardware-wise, a) haven't seen any ground-breaking performance improvements and b) are so overwhelmingly above most software requirements, that there's no point buying a new computer when your old one isn't broken, was not a thing that made it to the press often.
Instead, I was explaining all the virtues of new hardware and the improvements they brought and how wonderful all these were.

That didn't mean that I didn't know what I was talking about, nor that I was a corrupt journalist being "sold" to the highest bidder. It's just the name of the game. That's how things work, and it's actually up to the knowledgeable people (like I did with friends that asked for advice) to set the record straight; to actually give good advice to others, without bias or favouritism.
You don't need to get "techy" to explain to people what I just did, do you?

Yes indeed she's hot! I knew you would get a kick out of the pic. I also knew it wasn't what you were expecting.

Glad to know you're aware of her knowledge. Only a very small percent of users own a balls to the wall setup with all the bells and whistles. The vast majority of people have mid to low-end computers mainly because they feel they don't need the high power setup and can't afford it anyway.

It's exactly like cars. How many people own a Ferrari? Not many because most people don't need/want that type of performance and can't afford it.

I used to listen to her show on a regular basis and I still get her newsletter every day. The vast majority of questions posed to her are from novice users so telling these people to get the high power stuff and keep it for x amount of years is a fools errand.

I wish I could afford a better PC but can't. I'm in the same boat as most people. Believe me, if I could afford it, I would have the best PC on the planet!

Windy... mate... trust me when I say... even if you did, it'd be pointless.
I used to be the hardware labs in-chief of the magazine. I got the latest, greatest, very best stuff. I *had* gear that was very close to the top. At the end of the day, it still ran the same Windows like everything else and I still used it to watch the same movies, write my articles, surf the net, write some code, etc. like with any other computer. I had the first true quad-core two months before it hit the market, the first SSDs, graphics cards and motherboards. So what?
Having been in the hardware shit for more than 20 years, I can tell you... having the latest and greatest would have made sense... let's say, up until the early 2000s. You know... if you had a Pentium when everyone else had a 486... if you had a 3dfx Voodoo when everybody had an S3 Virge... or the first AMD Athlon at 550MHz, when the next best out there was a Pentium 3 at 450MHz... or even 512MB of RAM when everybody else had 64 or 128. Back then, differences like these were important! They meant the difference between your PC struggling to boot Windows and load even notepad, and gliding like silk.
You get my point, I suppose. Now... yeah, you could have a PC with a Core i7 whatever... or an AMD FX-whatever... so what? Windows will still run comfortably, most application requirements are greatly surpassed, even with a 3- or 4-year-old mediocre PC, so... what's the point?
I was thinking the same, when I had one of my monster PCs, with dual or even quad crossfire Radeons, 8-core CPU, tons of RAM, SSDs and all the bells and whistles... and all that expensive hardware was just idling for more than 99% of the time. GPUs in deep sleep mode... CPU cores at 0 or 1%... let me tell you, if I had to pay for all that, I'd be going crazy!
Just this afternoon, after writing my previous piece, I was thinking of my g/f's PC here. We're talking about an 8-year-old cheap-ass ready-made store offer PC, with a shitty socket 754 Biostar motherboard (that's for the first 64-bit Athlons with the single-channel memory controller) with a crappy SiS all-in-one chipset, a rock-bottom AMD Sempron at 1.4GHz with a single core based on the Barton (previous gen. socket A), 768MB DDR RAM (yes, DDR-1), integrated graphics and an IDE hard drive. Originally running Windows XP.
Even though I've upgraded some parts, mainly took the RAM to 1.5GB, put in a SATA hard drive (even though the motherboard only supports first-gen SATA) and added a low-midrange Radeon graphics card, that thing is running Windows 7 and it's more than enough for my g/f's needs, which are just surfing the net, watching on-line TV and YouTube vids and maybe the occasional Skype chat or writing a letter on LibreOffice.
Now, if that PC, which would be classified by any standards as utter shite, can serve a "plain" user successfully... why upgrade? Yes, it could be somewhat faster and yes, in pages filled with Flash crap it does slow down, but at the end of the day... who cares? And if that PC was upgraded just a tad bit more, with a better CPU and taken to 2 or 3GB of RAM to give it a bit more 'muscle' for those rare occasions, there would be no reason at all to buy a new one.

But actually, before, I was talking about "encouraging" people to upgrade; I never said "the high-end stuff". Obviously, these are the eye-catchers and these are the products that get people to start thinking, but ultimately, a good 65% of the retail sales are in the midrange. People read our articles about the "Ferrari" and then go and... change their FIAT for a VW Golf GT. That's how it works. Very few people are crazy enough to go and buy a $500 graphics card or a similarly priced CPU. However, a LOT of people will read about the new Intel, AMD or nVidia monster and go spend 100-200 bucks on a new-gen card or CPU. We are well aware that our articles are the seeds of "want" that we plant in the readers' brains. Write about the best, they go and buy... *something*.
As long as they keep buying, we're all happy in the food chain.

wish i had seen this sooner. sorry but i about pee'd my pants laughing soooooo hard. xp the popup and popunder queen with more security holes than i ever could count. vista pre sp1 as bad as xp was you were still better off with it. vista post sp1 was great if you knew what you were doing. windows 7 is simply what windows xp and vista should of been.