What other drawback (beside security) on XP & office 2003 ending support in Apr 2014?

Happy Hopping

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http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx

Okay, I know people who didn't even bother take SP3, just stays at SP2. And they are still alive w/ no virus so far. So w/ microsoft killing XP next April, what's going to happen? What's the most likely scenario?

Besides security concern?

Likewise, what's the big deal that they end the support for Office 2003? What will happen to people who uses Office 2003? As I know people who never take any update on Office 2003 and they are still alive and kicking. Like Office 2003 is not an internet related software, it's just an application suite
 
If they never interoperate with docs from other Office versions, don't allow USB access for employees, are filtered from the Internet, etc. they could also run DOS and it wouldn't matter.

The main reasons for upgrading are security and (forced) obsolescence in application file formats. If you don't care about that, go on with XP.
 
For the average person.. absolutely nothing. For those people who need a means of support (i.e. businesses), it would mean that they would no longer be able to call up MS and ask for help with an issue if they're still running XP or Office. That would mean they'll be on their own for configuration, security, compatibility, and bugs.
 
for an average person, I know lot of john doe who is still using SP2. But I also know other john doe who got hack in from vulnerability from XP. So if some hacker find a hole after Apr 2014 on XP, and these john joe have no OS security patches, then even if they are an average person, he would still suffer from the hack, won't he?
 
for an average person, I know lot of john doe who is still using SP2. But I also know other john doe who got hack in from vulnerability from XP. So if some hacker find a hole after Apr 2014 on XP, and these john joe have no OS security patches, then even if they are an average person, he would still suffer from the hack, won't he?

Correct. but in the last few years, most exploits take advantage of Java, FlashPlayer, and Reader (because they're just stupid easy to find holes). I don't know of too many exploited vulnerabilities in the OS's themselves. Also, XP's use is declining rapidly, so interest in it as a target to exploit is going to shrink as well.
 
Correct. but in the last few years, most exploits take advantage of Java, FlashPlayer, and Reader (because they're just stupid easy to find holes). I don't know of too many exploited vulnerabilities in the OS's themselves. Also, XP's use is declining rapidly, so interest in it as a target to exploit is going to shrink as well.

Declining XP use is not the same as no XP use. The sooner XP is banished from every workstation and desktop on the planet, the better off all of us will be.

And the most widely reported exploits do indeed use Flash and Java as vectors, but that isn't the same as saying XP is secure or safe to use going forward. A look at the content of every patch Tuesday is enough to dismiss that idea.

XP at this point is the OS version of IE6. It's holding the common denominator artificially low, and I wouldn't be surprised if XP machines comprise the majority of botnets.
 
Nothing necessarily bad will happen to those 2 things. Without security and other updates (daylight savings changes, or other nonessential updates), XP and Office 2003 will continue to become more insecure, and possibly a bit more unpleasant to use. XP as an EOL product will start to rot like 2000 did: fewer applications will support it* and at some point that will accelerate until XP is officially "dead". It's probably going to be supported by many applications for a while: XP still holds around 40% of the Windows install base.

More generally, there are still a few million Win9x-based systems connected to the internets. Die hards die hard.

*not necessarily because a particular game or application can't run, but because any problems that pop up will not be fixed in the OS, or because upgrading to some software feature "X" which is not available on XP is simply the way forward.
 
Eventually, the minimum system requirements will be Windows 7 or greater. That's when you'll have issues. It just won't work with XP. But, for a standalone PC that doesn't really get new software, other than security - nothing. I know people that have working Windows 98 machines. Slow as fuck, but they are working and chugging along.
 
Also, XP's use is declining rapidly, so interest in it as a target to exploit is going to shrink as well.

totally disagree. XP is the most widely used OS, because vista was so screw back then, people who's using Vista downgrade to xP, or people just stay w/ XP and never move to Vista.

When I service PC daily, at least 1/2 are XP based

1 client is still using Win 98, when I shut down her PC, it says in orange, "It is now safe to turn off your machine", and I thought, i haven't sent that for over 1 decade
 
Declining XP use is not the same as no XP use. The sooner XP is banished from every workstation and desktop on the planet, the better off all of us will be.

And the most widely reported exploits do indeed use Flash and Java as vectors, but that isn't the same as saying XP is secure or safe to use going forward. A look at the content of every patch Tuesday is enough to dismiss that idea.

XP at this point is the OS version of IE6. It's holding the common denominator artificially low, and I wouldn't be surprised if XP machines comprise the majority of botnets.

I never said it would be secure or safe to use. Just that the less it's used, the more secure (even if only relatively) it would be simply because the bulk of exploiters won't want to waste their time on a platform with little return. That was not meant to be a justification for continuing to use it. After all, who would suggest taking the locks off your doors is a good idea because 99% of the time no one is going to try to get into your home.





totally disagree. XP is the most widely used OS, because vista was so screw back then, people who's using Vista downgrade to xP, or people just stay w/ XP and never move to Vista.

When I service PC daily, at least 1/2 are XP based

1 client is still using Win 98, when I shut down her PC, it says in orange, "It is now safe to turn off your machine", and I thought, i haven't sent that for over 1 decade

The numbers are what they are. Your anecdotal data doesn't change that. Trying to justify your conclusion by using Vista (the second most hated version of Windows in recent years) as a reference is fallacious. Windows 7 has been out for nearly 4 years, and it's market share has been well into 50-60% for year or two now. Last year Windows XP had around 25% of the market, and this year it's down to around 15%. It lost nearly 50% of it's share in 12 months. That's a pretty rapid decline in my book.


(one source from a quick google search: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp)
 
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I'm talking about old PC still running XP, PC that is 6 yr. or older

That doesn't have any relevance to whether or not XP use is declining. People replace their old computer. And even still a10 year old computer (ca 2004) is capable of running Windows 7, albeit not all that fast.
 
Security is the biggest reason to move from XP to 7, especially going from XP SP2 to anything.
 
There is no way a 10 yr. old PC capable running win 7, as the motherboard manufacturer couldn't possibly have the drivers for its network card, audio, etc.
 
There is no way a 10 yr. old PC capable running win 7, as the motherboard manufacturer couldn't possibly have the drivers for its network card, audio, etc.

Err, the older it is, the more likely it is that Win7 itself has drivers for it.
 
There is no way a 10 yr. old PC capable running win 7, as the motherboard manufacturer couldn't possibly have the drivers for its network card, audio, etc.

Motherboard manufacturers use generic components from companies like Realtek or ADI on their products. So on the odd chance Win7 doesn't include a driver, and the motherboard manufacturer doesn't have one, then the component manufacturer most likely will. Even then, Vista and Win7 use nearly the same driver model, so if you can't find a Win7 specific driver, a Vista driver will work in its place.
 
There is no way a 10 yr. old PC capable running win 7, as the motherboard manufacturer couldn't possibly have the drivers for its network card, audio, etc.
It's not outside possibility that a 10 year old system can run Windows 7 with all devices detected. There is a significant chance than one or more hardware devices will not have Windows 7 drivers available, and checking compatibility is a wise thing to do before plonking down money on a Windows 7 upgrade.

Windows has a huge collection of reference drivers, but of course that doesn't mean every device (particularly older hardware) will have one.

tl;dr Windows 7 on old hardware = tread carefully before buying the upgrade
 
There is no way a 10 yr. old PC capable running win 7, as the motherboard manufacturer couldn't possibly have the drivers for its network card, audio, etc.

That is 100% false. I put Windows 7 on older computers all the time.

First of all, Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Windows Vista, so it doesn't really matter if Windows 7 drivers are available, only if Vista drivers are available. As Vista came out in 2006, there are actually many Vista drivers available for older hardware that work fine on 7.

If that fails, and you are only going for 32-bit Windows 7, most hardware will work by force installing XP drivers. Even most old unsupported graphics adapters will still let you use XP-era drivers that work fine for 2D purposes and support all the correct 2d resolutions, etc.

I just finished putting together a box made out of old workstation components. I used a Tyan Tiger MPX, 2x AthlonMP 2400+, 4GB Registered DDR, and some old SCSI drives. Almost all 10+ year old hardware and it feels faster than some of the systems people buy new.
 
It's not outside possibility that a 10 year old system can run Windows 7 with all devices detected. There is a significant chance than one or more hardware devices will not have Windows 7 drivers available, and checking compatibility is a wise thing to do before plonking down money on a Windows 7 upgrade.

Windows has a huge collection of reference drivers, but of course that doesn't mean every device (particularly older hardware) will have one.

tl;dr Windows 7 on old hardware = tread carefully before buying the upgrade

10 years ago in 2003 we were using Athlon X2 and P4 and both of those can run Windows 7 just fine as long as you have enough ram (1GB)
 
people, the abs. min. to run a PC w/ an anti-virus is AVast at P3 w/ 128 MB of RAM, and it'll be running so slow that it's not even funny. I did tune up a P3-450MHz PC w/ 384MB of RAM under xp, but it run very slow. As such, it's hard to imagine how much slower it would be if win 7 is install
 
people, the abs. min. to run a PC w/ an anti-virus is AVast at P3 w/ 128 MB of RAM, and it'll be running so slow that it's not even funny. I did tune up a P3-450MHz PC w/ 384MB of RAM under xp, but it run very slow. As such, it's hard to imagine how much slower it would be if win 7 is install


The absolute minimum to run XP with all the current updates and a modern (i.e. safe) browser is 768MB these days. I have a neighbor whose mother has a P4 2.53 with 512MB, and just opening the browser and going to Facebook ate up 600MB. Page thrashing was so bad that she could not use the computer at all. I put in 1GB for her and it was night and day difference.

Win7 is actually tunes itself to make efficient use of available resources. So it might just run a little better. In my experience, switching a few dozen low end computers to Win7 made them more usable for the clients that were willing to pay for the upgrade. (Talking P4/AthlonXP level here).
 
Athlon 64 since the X2's didn't get here until 2005.


Even so, Win7 will "run" on a P2-266 with 96MB of RAM.
http://www.techspot.com/news/35164-windows-7-installed-on-a-pentium-iibased-pc.html

win 7 comes in x86 and Pentium 4 was launched back in 2000. Of course it will run on lesser hardware but someone in this thread said it would not run on 10 year old hardware and I was pointing out it would run (well I would consider smoothly at 1GB) provided enough ram...
 
People, if you are using a motherboard that is 10 yr. old, which has like 2 slots, it would mean that you need 512 MB x 2 or 1 GB x 2. Say we stay w/ 1 Gb, i.e, 512 MB x 2, do they even make memory that big back in 2000?

I only see 128 MB module back in 2000, I can't remember that far back that they have 512 MB module, and if so, it would be very expensive back then, and I don't know how you can get those modules these days
 
win 7 comes in x86 and Pentium 4 was launched back in 2000. Of course it will run on lesser hardware but someone in this thread said it would not run on 10 year old hardware and I was pointing out it would run (well I would consider smoothly at 1GB) provided enough ram...

I know. You said had Athlon X2, and I thought you were talking about the Athlon 64 X2. But now that I'm thinking about it, you probably meant the Athlon XP instead. .


Sadly, Win7 will actually run on a P3 from 1998 faster than it would a P4 from 2000. :D


People, if you are using a motherboard that is 10 yr. old, which has like 2 slots, it would mean that you need 512 MB x 2 or 1 GB x 2. Say we stay w/ 1 Gb, i.e, 512 MB x 2, do they even make memory that big back in 2000?

I only see 128 MB module back in 2000, I can't remember that far back that they have 512 MB module, and if so, it would be very expensive back then, and I don't know how you can get those modules these days

10 years ago was 2003.. which was right smack in the middle of DDR1's reign. And they certainly had 512MB even 1GB DDR1 modules.

That said, 2000 we were still using PC133 SDRAM, and they did have 512MB parts, if your system was compatible. I upgraded an old Dell GX something or other with a P3-1GHz to 1GB of PC133 years back for my kids to play on.

As far as how you get them today: Here you go.
 
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I ran Windows 7 (and OS X) on my cheapie Dell netbook with an Atom 1.66GHz CPU. Performance was acceptable with 2GB (single channel) of memory and a HDD. An Atom 1.66GHz is easily outclassed by what were low end Athlon XP processors 10 years ago. I'm not claiming that 10 year old platforms are ideal, but a P4 or AXP with 2GB wouldn't be too slow to run Windows 7.

I looked up some old systems running Win 7 when I first read this thread, and even something like a very low end 2002-era Dimension 2400 can run Win7, at least if a PCI video card is installed (no drivers are available for the integrated graphics, but the other devices work).
 
10 years ago was 2003.. which was right smack in the middle of DDR1's reign. And they certainly had 512MB even 1GB DDR1 modules.

That said, 2000 we were still using PC133 SDRAM, and they did have 512MB parts, if your system was compatible. I upgraded an old Dell GX something or other with a P3-1GHz to 1GB of PC133 years back for my kids to play on.

As far as how you get them today: Here you go.

do you know the price of 512 MB or 1 GB back in 2001? 1 GB RD RAM from Compaq, 2001 P4-1.3GHz, for e.g., go for $1K in a Compaq PC

No1 can afford them back then. And today, if you buy them at ebay, the cost of the RAM & shipping is more than the PC's worth value
 
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You have all kinds of other problems if you're running a S423/RD-RAM P4 system which needs a memory upgrade, unless you're looking for a doorstop. :p

Too bad the search doesn't go back that far, but many people with Athlon XP and higher clocked Pentium 3 systems had 1GB+ in 2001. A pair of 512MB DDR DIMMs was under $70 in 2001. If you were careful with the memory selection (high density, single rank), it was easy to run 1.5GB or 2GB of RAM since most retail motherboards had 3 or 4 DIMM slots. It is fair to point out that many OEM vendors, including Dell, were selling lowest end systems with 128MB as late as 10 years ago.
 
I still use Windows XP but only for LAN party machines. Obviously - they don't see internet usage, so security isn't a huge concern. As long as me and a few friends can get our frag on (with ye olde CRT monitors of course ;) ), I don't care.
 
Motherboard manufacturers use generic components from companies like Realtek or ADI on their products. So on the odd chance Win7 doesn't include a driver, and the motherboard manufacturer doesn't have one, then the component manufacturer most likely will. Even then, Vista and Win7 use nearly the same driver model, so if you can't find a Win7 specific driver, a Vista driver will work in its place.

ok, let's pick a realistic e.g.:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2223#dl

Let's say the hardware, a P4 - 3.2GHz plus 1 to 2 GB of RAM, can easily run win 7.

You'll need a video, audio, ethernet, and most of all, all the SATA and USB drivers of the motherboard. Exactly how would you get all these drivers?
 
If they never interoperate with docs from other Office versions, don't allow USB access for employees, are filtered from the Internet, etc. they could also run DOS and it wouldn't matter.

The main reasons for upgrading are security and (forced) obsolescence in application file formats. If you don't care about that, go on with XP.

Well we all must know that soon or later all of the users of window xp will forced to swap in W7...
 
Integrated in Win7 or intel.com.

I can tell you right now, there is zero chance that the ethernet cable is integrated in win 7.

And those are 3rd party john doe brand name. Without knowing the name of the network card, you can forget it to work on any PC How would you know who the OEM is in the 1st place?

Same deal w/ the other components. All you get is a pile of yellow !
 
Your thinking is completely backwards. The older the hardware is, the _more_ likely it is that Win7 has integrated drivers for it. Why do you think a Win7 install is taking 10GB+? It's because of the tons of drivers that come with it.

You get a pile of yellow if Win7 _predates_ the hardware, not the other way around.

Edit: Plus, if it's Intel, you get drivers. The NIC would have to be pretty exotic (no Intel, Realtek, Broadcom, ...) to have no drivers at all. I don't think any S775 board had such exotic stuff onboard.

Edit2: You picked a really bad board to spew some FUD. Audio: Realtek. NIC: Intel. Chipset: Intel. Integrated graphics: Intel. Addon graphics: AMD or NV.

$10 this board would run out of the box.
 
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I can tell you right now, there is zero chance that the ethernet cable is integrated in win 7.

And those are 3rd party john doe brand name. Without knowing the name of the network card, you can forget it to work on any PC How would you know who the OEM is in the 1st place?

Same deal w/ the other components. All you get is a pile of yellow !

It appears that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing, and worse that you have no desire to actually learn anything about what you come on here and post about. I hope you are trolling, because I'd really feel sorry for any company that has to rely on the lacking expertise you've displayed thus far.
 
Same deal w/ the other components. All you get is a pile of yellow !
The first thing to do in that situation is right click and update driver, search online, and there's a good chance one or more of those devices has a reference driver available from MS.

If that fails, look at the device id in the property page and google it with something like windows 7 driver appended to the device id. That may find more drivers for devices.

After all that, it's possible that there may not be one or more device drivers available. In that case, a replacement card (PCI or PCIe or USB) for that device would need to be used if that functionality is essential.

Being confounded by a bunch of yellow exclamation points in device manager is more a sign of n00biness than hopelessness of finding drivers for those devices.
 
Looking at this from a non-security viewpoint, my issue is with compatibility with some software.

And, it varies from person to person, computer to computer, software to software.

I'll give you a good example.

A friend plays Final Fantasy XI. The graphics engine is both CPU-bound (relies little on the GPU) and is DirectX 8.1-based. He gets the same issues with both Windows 7 and Windows 8 (both 64-bit) with his Radeon HD 6870. These issues are massive texture flickering on all player characters, NPCs, and monsters. This computer has a GIgabyte board and i7 920.

He upgraded his computer to brand new parts-- CPU, GPU, board, PSU, memory-- which are an i7-4670K and a different board manufacturer, ASUS. His video card this time was a Radeon HD 7950.

Guess what? Same graphical issues with both Windows 7 and Windows 8. Catalyst drivers 12.10 to 13.6 Beta were tested as well. Nothing fixed it whether using Windower, turning off certain effects, turning on Graphics stabilization in the configuration. Nothing. Leaving no anti-virus installed, updating to latest drivers, running as Admin on the program. Absolutely nothing fixed it.

He's resorted to installing Windows XP SP3 on a separate partition just to play this game. And, guess what? The graphical issues disappeared.

Now, I play FFXI as well with a Radeon HD 6950 but Windows 8 Pro 64-bit and an ASRock board with Catalyst 12.10 installed. NO graphical issues whatsoever.

So, it really varies from person to person.

Another issue I've come across is with one of the games I play quite often-- Pangya. Now this could be a problem with the developer that's put into the game. But, the game has issues with Windows 7 and Windows 8. Yes, both Windows 7 and 8 can run the game, but it makes the taskbar funky (flickers), Start button disappears (in Windows 7), Skype crashes while the game is running, Steam crashes, and very rarely other programs throws off a random out of memory error on a system with 16GB of RAM installed.

I put the game in Windows XP Pro SP3 installed in a VM and run it through VMWare Workstation. Guess what? No issues whatsover. That game runs absolutely fine as if it's running on another computer and native hardware.

So, when Windows XP is cutoff and if activation is no longer possible, it's going to be a problem to a lot of people who run certain games. Why? These developers refuse to update their games or reprogram them to have better compatibility with newer Windows operating systems.

It's going to be a problem later on when the DirectX versions are revised in each iteration and support for older DirectX versions are either emulated or certain features are deprecated or removed. These games are going to have compatibility issues regardless because of stubborn developers like Square-Enix and a few others. That is something the end-user cannot fix except resorting to older operating system such as Windows XP.
 
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