Happy Birthday Windows XP! Now Switch

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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That’s pretty much the message from Microsoft on the unprecedented lengthy run of Windows XP. Microsoft is beating the make the switch drum faster and faster and wouldn’t miss an opportunity like the 10th anniversary of XP to press their message to make the change over to Windows 7.
 
They did a good job when they made XP. I've got a feeling it will be around for a while yet. Especially in the corporate sector. Unless the rigs break or slow down significantly, many businesses use the "if it aint broke" motto.

Once they all move to 7, we'll be saying this all over again - "man, dump 7 already, and move to 11". ;)
 
I still use winxp and find no reason to switch. Actually, win7 has gamma issues and lower fps in games from my testing. Doh.
 
HA HA, just upgraded my kids XP to Vista Friday night, had it laying around, was running an AMD 2800+ that I just retired, Microcenter for the win, picked up an AMD 840, mobo, and ram for well under $200.
My work is starting to sowly move to 7. We couldnt before because some of the software was not 7 compatable (no excuse for it either), but is now, cant wait.
 
Monkey34 said:
They did a good job when they made XP. I've got a feeling it will be around for a while yet. Especially in the corporate sector. Unless the rigs break or slow down significantly, many businesses use the "if it aint broke" motto.

Once they all move to 7, we'll be saying this all over again - "man, dump 7 already, and move to 11". ;)
Click to expand...

If they are still using xp, there is a good chance the hardware isn't ready for 7. I'd hate to be the guy that gets laid off to pay for replacing every desktop in a company.
 
lots of proprietary 3rd party stuff wont run on Vista, I have XP boxes for CNC controllers and for connecting to dataloggers at work
 
There will probably never be another OS that matches XP's importance and longevity, but it is 10 years old and it may not be broken, it's on Social Security. And while it runs well on older hardware it doesn't seem to run nearly was well on newer hardware 7. In any case, I think Windows 8 will finally put a nail in XP's coffin. It'll still be around but support for it is going to really die fast after 8 comes out.
 
I still run XP, mainly due to that I don't wanna spend any more money putting anything on this current machine as I *plan* on building a new one come next year for w7/8..
 
Retsam said:
I still use winxp and find no reason to switch. Actually, win7 has gamma issues and lower fps in games from my testing. Doh.
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Then you haven't looked very hard. There are a ton of reasons to drop XP, security being chief among them with stability running a close second. Also, your testing is flawed.

If you aren't in a corporate environment running specialized software and are still holding on to XP, you need your head checked.
 
Retsam said:
I still use winxp and find no reason to switch. Actually, win7 has gamma issues and lower fps in games from my testing. Doh.
Click to expand...

XP is good enough, and in some cases better (e.g. running DX9 and older games). It's a waste of money to upgrade Windows on a computer that shipped with XP.
 
Like a lot of you on here I repair a lot of friend's and family's machines. I'm getting to the point now if I have to look at their XP machine I just groan. Thank god they're finally starting to not show up anymore. Work is another matter - XP everywhere because they're too cheap to upgrade their boxes unless they flat out die.
 
bonus said:
Like a lot of you on here I repair a lot of friend's and family's machines. I'm getting to the point now if I have to look at their XP machine I just groan. Thank god they're finally starting to not show up anymore. Work is another matter - XP everywhere because they're too cheap to upgrade their boxes unless they flat out die.
Click to expand...
I can safely say that I don't see as many shitty Dell and HP boxes with XP and 256 MB RAM with some bloated version on Norton AV running. Adding more RAM and removing Norton got old.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Then you haven't looked very hard. There are a ton of reasons to drop XP, security being chief among them with stability running a close second. Also, your testing is flawed.

If you aren't in a corporate environment running specialized software and are still holding on to XP, you need your head checked.
Click to expand...

Just because you say it doesn't make it true.

Win7's security is a fucking joke. What are you going to do when you are the type to have a dedicated boot drive and run apps and save files to a different drive? Well, shit, I couldn't even get Firefox to save settings when it ran from a different drive. Escalating to Admin didn't help when it then became an issue of not being able to read/write to the drive when it came to files other programs created.

Solution? Log in as administrator to run those apps and be able to edit files in places other than your home folder. Including their own INI configuration files.

So in this case, Win7 won't even allow programs to change files in the same folder that they run from. No way around it but to completely disable it. Whoops. Bye bye security.

Nevermind that in the 3 years I ran WinXP on my netbook, unprotected and patched only up to SP2 (WinXP Fundamentals will only update that far)... there was not one compromised file or one bit of malware on it. Responsible user behaviour will do more than anyone one virus scanner can.

Also consider that you can run a WinXP on solid hardware for years without a BSOD, stability isn't really the issue with the OS... but with the drivers that tend to get installed. All Win7 did was move drivers from the kernel/system ring to the user ring. More stable? Not really, if you didn't have unstable drivers in the first place.

Too much ignorance involving people who want to look down on others for whatever flaccid reason they can come up with.

WinXP works. It still works. That it's still widely used after 10 years is proof of that. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to say one needs to switch from WinXP to Win7... use those. Don't just LOLZUMADBROPROBLEMTROLOLOLOL like a douche.

Legit reasons to upgrade from WinXP:

* Hardware support. Especially now that motherboards tend to boot primarily from SATA and use that single IDE header (if there even is one) as part of RAID. Even slipstreaming install boot time drivers isn't always guaranteed to work. Being able to plug devices in and have it search for drivers is pretty nice. Saves trouble on looking up CDs.

* Memory mapping. I had no issues with WinXP when I had a video card with 512MB of ram and the motherboard created a hole for that ram under 4GB. If you use a motherboard that tends to push video above 4GB regardless or have a video card (or SLI setup) that has 1GB of ram or more, reducing your available pool to system to about 2.5GB once booted... yeah, you'll probably just want to throw Win7 on your system.

I ran into an interesting issue that I was able to duplicate perfectly.

New MSI motherboard caused video ram to be pushed above 4GB, had an "all or nothing" AHCI mode (One bios switch made all ports SATA/AHCI or IDE Compatible. No ability to set only the boot drive to IDE Compatible or a partial set)... so I also had a performance hit there as well. The video card had 1.7GB onboard and when I booted into WinXP with 4GB of ram installed, it showed 3.5GB as available to system. Yeah. There's something going on there...

If I ever alt-tabbed or lost focus (I played in Windowed mode) while a game was loading, namely BC2 or TF2.. the game would crash sometime along the way, length of time before the problem showed up directly correlated to how long during loading before focus on that game was lost.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540653520017352426/D5A154080BA5096808EB06633CBF3CA585DD23CF/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541779136803524580/D2FB49608D66C5B261B49EB989A9558041F7383C/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542896805674016584/C7E70390F97E88522DB5B69A8CC0EDDA952C6880/

Made for some interesting screenshots when the glitch would kick in. Screenshotting made the game crash instantly otherwise it'd be about another minute before it would do it on its own.

Theory? Alt tabbing causes programs to go to swap. When drivers and/or bios are already doing tricks to make use of memory outside of addressable space, swapping and tabbing back to the game probably causes a few things to not load properly into video ram.

Installing Win7 fixed this issue completely.

Plenty of legit reasons to list off without having to go DERP HURR UR A TOOL FOR NOT SWITCHING GET A CLUE.

I still use WinXP on my netbook and would still use WinXP on my desktop if not for the above two issues I mentioned. Why? Because everything was working fine until I got a new motherboard and video card. Saying you think I need to get my head checked isn't going to make any convincing arguments for other people, but rather, just makes you look like another douche who feels the need to bully because he's got something newer.
 
bonus said:
Like a lot of you on here I repair a lot of friend's and family's machines. I'm getting to the point now if I have to look at their XP machine I just groan. Thank god they're finally starting to not show up anymore. Work is another matter - XP everywhere because they're too cheap to upgrade their boxes unless they flat out die.
Click to expand...

I have nearly completely stopped supporting XP at this point. Basically if a customer brings me an XP box and it isn't something extremely minor I tell them it is past time to upgrade. I dropped XP 5 years ago and I supported it far longer than I ever did 95/98/2000 when I dropped them. Basically to me it isn't really even worth the investment. 99% of the machines I see XP on are so old that repairing them would cost more in my labor then the machine i worth. I just refuse to sink $200 worth of labor into a machine that could be replaced for $400.
 
techrat said:
Just because you say it doesn't make it true.

Win7's security is a fucking joke. What are you going to do when you are the type to have a dedicated boot drive and run apps and save files to a different drive? Well, shit, I couldn't even get Firefox to save settings when it ran from a different drive. Escalating to Admin didn't help when it then became an issue of not being able to read/write to the drive when it came to files other programs created.

Solution? Log in as administrator to run those apps and be able to edit files in places other than your home folder. Including their own INI configuration files.

So in this case, Win7 won't even allow programs to change files in the same folder that they run from. No way around it but to completely disable it. Whoops. Bye bye security.

Nevermind that in the 3 years I ran WinXP on my netbook, unprotected and patched only up to SP2 (WinXP Fundamentals will only update that far)... there was not one compromised file or one bit of malware on it. Responsible user behaviour will do more than anyone one virus scanner can.

Also consider that you can run a WinXP on solid hardware for years without a BSOD, stability isn't really the issue with the OS... but with the drivers that tend to get installed. All Win7 did was move drivers from the kernel/system ring to the user ring. More stable? Not really, if you didn't have unstable drivers in the first place.

Too much ignorance involving people who want to look down on others for whatever flaccid reason they can come up with.

WinXP works. It still works. That it's still widely used after 10 years is proof of that. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to say one needs to switch from WinXP to Win7... use those. Don't just LOLZUMADBROPROBLEMTROLOLOLOL like a douche.

Legit reasons to upgrade from WinXP:

* Hardware support. Especially now that motherboards tend to boot primarily from SATA and use that single IDE header (if there even is one) as part of RAID. Even slipstreaming install boot time drivers isn't always guaranteed to work. Being able to plug devices in and have it search for drivers is pretty nice. Saves trouble on looking up CDs.

* Memory mapping. I had no issues with WinXP when I had a video card with 512MB of ram and the motherboard created a hole for that ram under 4GB. If you use a motherboard that tends to push video above 4GB regardless or have a video card (or SLI setup) that has 1GB of ram or more, reducing your available pool to system to about 2.5GB once booted... yeah, you'll probably just want to throw Win7 on your system.

I ran into an interesting issue that I was able to duplicate perfectly.

New MSI motherboard caused video ram to be pushed above 4GB, had an "all or nothing" AHCI mode (One bios switch made all ports SATA/AHCI or IDE Compatible. No ability to set only the boot drive to IDE Compatible or a partial set)... so I also had a performance hit there as well. The video card had 1.7GB onboard and when I booted into WinXP with 4GB of ram installed, it showed 3.5GB as available to system. Yeah. There's something going on there...

If I ever alt-tabbed or lost focus (I played in Windowed mode) while a game was loading, namely BC2 or TF2.. the game would crash sometime along the way, length of time before the problem showed up directly correlated to how long during loading before focus on that game was lost.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540653520017352426/D5A154080BA5096808EB06633CBF3CA585DD23CF/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541779136803524580/D2FB49608D66C5B261B49EB989A9558041F7383C/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542896805674016584/C7E70390F97E88522DB5B69A8CC0EDDA952C6880/

Made for some interesting screenshots when the glitch would kick in. Screenshotting made the game crash instantly otherwise it'd be about another minute before it would do it on its own.

Theory? Alt tabbing causes programs to go to swap. When drivers and/or bios are already doing tricks to make use of memory outside of addressable space, swapping and tabbing back to the game probably causes a few things to not load properly into video ram.

Installing Win7 fixed this issue completely.

Plenty of legit reasons to list off without having to go DERP HURR UR A TOOL FOR NOT SWITCHING GET A CLUE.

I still use WinXP on my netbook and would still use WinXP on my desktop if not for the above two issues I mentioned. Why? Because everything was working fine until I got a new motherboard and video card. Saying you think I need to get my head checked isn't going to make any convincing arguments for other people, but rather, just makes you look like another douche who feels the need to bully because he's got something newer.
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The few things you mention affect so few users they aren't worth mentioning. Also you give the average user far too much credit when it comes to responsible behavior. Fact is XP was a nightmare to support when the average user was on it.

Netbooks aren't a legitimate argument. Even with XP they are completely worthless.

You can yell about what I said all you want..Fact is there is plenty of proof that XP was never a stable OS and was a security nightmare compared to both Vista and 7.
 
I run every operating system microsoft has released since ME.

I still prefer XP. For a single user, who doesn't randomly download crap or run .exe that someone emailed me, it's more than fine.

Win7 is okay, I don't like that my operating system takes up 40-60 gigs. XP loads can be under a gig.
 
it does too in about a week. maybe 2 weeks.

WINSXS just gets more and more bloated with time.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Then you haven't looked very hard. There are a ton of reasons to drop XP, security being chief among them with stability running a close second. Also, your testing is flawed.

If you aren't in a corporate environment running specialized software and are still holding on to XP, you need your head checked.
Click to expand...

Security? Pfft.... Stability? Hum, I never have any issues.....You must be doing it wrong.

Many inexperienced people say stuff like that. I actually do know what I am talking about, and you are wrong. In games I play and have benchmarked, as I own both winxp and win7 boxes, win7 does in fact have lower fps.

In addition, win7 has an inherent flaw for people who need to change gamma settings in games, like me. I run a CRT and win7 does not allow you to change gamma. This is one of the main reasons I had to stick with xp. I am not opposed to switching my main box to win7, but if MS is too dumb to figure out how to allow users to change gamma within games, I am not going to switch over for as long as I can.
 
Retsam said:
I still use winxp and find no reason to switch. Actually, win7 has gamma issues and lower fps in games from my testing. Doh.
Click to expand...

I guess you like security exploits, and stability issues.

In my testing, everything runs faster on Windows 7, including games, but I think it depends on your hardware. If you have more than 2 logical threads/cores and a DX11 capable video card, Windows XP is really holding you back in games.

For instance. Right now, Red Orchestra 2 is DX9 only, but it is also a highly complex #D rendered world, so the CPU draw calls present a heavy CPU load.

Because it is DX9 only (essentially what you get in XP) all of those draw calls go to the same core/logical thread) making RO2 extremely CPU limited.

They are working on a DX11 patch (or so they say) that resolves this, but if you don't have at least Vista or are running on an obsolete pre-Radeon 5xxx series or Geforce 4xx series video card, this won't help you at all.

But really, security is the biggest issue with Windows XP. I can't wait for the day it finally dies, because that will be the day that my received spam will decline significantly.

XP is old. It was never intended to last this long, and it really should have died 5 years ago.

There are some circumstances where it is faster than Windows 7, but usually only if you are running older hardware (only two logical threads) or low amounts of RAM. Since ram is so cheap today, and Windows 7 has so many benefits, sticking with XP is quite frankly, moronic.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
The few things you mention affect so few users they aren't worth mentioning. Also you give the average user far too much credit when it comes to responsible behavior. Fact is XP was a nightmare to support when the average user was on it.

Netbooks aren't a legitimate argument. Even with XP they are completely worthless.

You can yell about what I said all you want..Fact is there is plenty of proof that XP was never a stable OS and was a security nightmare compared to both Vista and 7.
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GRR! I AM BOSS! WHAT I SAY GOES! MY WORD IS GOD!

Get over yourself.
 
bonus said:
Work is another matter - XP everywhere because they're too cheap to upgrade their boxes unless they flat out die.
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In corporate settings XP survives for other reasons. Many companies are still reliant on web based business apps installed after the Y2K scare, when IE6 was king.

Many of these apps are written for IE6, and break on newer browsers. (some partially run on IE7 as well, but third party browsers, or IE8 or newer are straight out).

Upgrading business apps is very costly and often turns into multi-year multi-million if not billion (depending on the size of the company) dollar projects. It's also fraught with dangers. The business literature is full of examples of companies going under due to their corporate wide business app upgrades. There are always bugs in these systems at first, and when they result in missed deliveries to important clients, or other issues it CAN and HAS killed companies.

The costs and risks of these systems far outweighs the costs of upgrading clients. That's nothing in comparison.

So, for Corporate settings like this, it makes sense for them to keep XP (though I would upgrade to Windows 7 Professional and run the included full version of XP for those apps, but that's just me.

For everyone else, it makes no sense at all to keep XP. You are putting yourself at risk due to security flaws, you will have a less stable machine, and if you have more modern hardware, you are getting worse performance.


I have spent about a year and a half switching back and forth between Win7 Professional and Win XP on my work laptop. (I have a hard drive I use for personal use wich I pop in and boot from whan not at work).

With identical hardware (apart from the hard drive. Its a Core i5-520M with 4GB Ram) the comparison feels like this:

Windows XP: Feels more lightweight, but often gets caught up on little things. The experience is sort of like being on a small boat. Lightweight, but every single wave that comes it's way shakes it. It's faster in fits and starts, but then it gets hung up for no reason and something takes forever.

Windows 7: It's an even and smooth experience. It feels like it doesn't get rocked easily. Like being in a larger boat. It feels heavier, but it doesn't get caught up as much, and overall things get done faster.

The only reason to stay on XP is if you are on older hardware (Athlon 64 X2, Core 2 Duo or older) and have 2GB of RAM or less. If your machine is any newer than this, you will benefit from Win 7. If you have older hardware and stay on XP you do this at your own peril, due to all the security issues.
 
We're still on XP at work. I can't imagine what the cost would be if we were to upgrade this huge and tightly managed environment to Win7. Everything would have to be redone. Just ensuring that all the SMS packages deploy correctly would take many hundreds of hours... then there's always a risk that some crucial application would stop working.

We're currently migrating from Office 2003 to Office 2010, which is expected to take around 2 months.
 
stealthy123 said:
it does too in about a week. maybe 2 weeks.

WINSXS just gets more and more bloated with time.
Click to expand...

My Windows 7 install is a year and a half old, and explorer says it occupies 19.7GBs. And as far as I know explorer doesn't account for symlink'ed files correctly, so in many cases it counts those files twice or more.

But in general, XP is missing some key security features, like ASLR which when combined with DEP is a vital security feature against exploits. Win 7 also does sandboxing of the browser, so even if you get exploited, the exploit can't auto-run or mess with user files. Not to mention all the little things like ACL'ed services, file/folder virtualization so you can run apps as standard user that weren't meant to, patchguard and driver signing to twart rootkits if you run x64 (which is much easier for win 7 than XP), and so on. You could be careful with XP and lucky and not get infected but for average users Win 7's protections are a much better option.

Additionally, most every benchmark I've seen on the web puts Win 7 (and even Vista) ahead of XP. XP is also lacking in support of multicore and hyperthreading, and SSDs. It's user interface is not GPU accelerated, it does not have DX11, so it will not run for instance BF3, and also many other games that weren't built for DX11 but have DX11 renderer options run much faster in DX11 on Win 7, such as WoW (I'm told up to 50% faster).

You can stick with XP, but don't try to tell us it's better for the average user or anything, because it's clearly not.
 
explorer says my win 7 install is 37 gig, and I just went through trimming 8 gigs out of it couple days ago.

I don't know if I run too much hard ware, but every single time winsxs gets freaking huge.

I honestly find it hard to believe anyone has a win7 install that takes up less than 20 gig, so good for you.
 
and trust me, I have been running smallish SSDs for a while.

the bloat is very real, and a huge turn off.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037921932 said:
Windows XP: Feels more lightweight, but often gets caught up on little things. The experience is sort of like being on a small boat. Lightweight, but every single wave that comes it's way shakes it. It's faster in fits and starts, but then it gets hung up for no reason and something takes forever.

Windows 7: It's an even and smooth experience. It feels like it doesn't get rocked easily. Like being in a larger boat. It feels heavier, but it doesn't get caught up as much, and overall things get done faster.

The only reason to stay on XP is if you are on older hardware (Athlon 64 X2, Core 2 Duo or older) and have 2GB of RAM or less. If your machine is any newer than this, you will benefit from Win 7. If you have older hardware and stay on XP you do this at your own peril, due to all the security issues.
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I'd say this is a very good analogy but I do think that on modern hardware 7 feels even lighter than XP because as you say, 7 doesn't get caught up in the little things nearly as much. I hope to have my work machine on 7 by the beginning of the year, at which point I should not have to deal with XP ever again for any of computing needs. Thank goodness.

devil22 said:
You can stick with XP, but don't try to tell us it's better for the average user or anything, because it's clearly not.
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Exactly. Anyone claiming that XP is anything more than a legacy OS that's needed to run obsolete or neglected software or hardware is just claiming. Is XP still useful, of course. Is 7 much better, absolutely. And when 8 comes out running on even leaner and meaner than 7 XP will look even more like the dinosaur that it is.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037921932 said:
The only reason to stay on XP is if you are on older hardware (Athlon 64 X2, Core 2 Duo or older) and have 2GB of RAM or less. If your machine is any newer than this, you will benefit from Win 7. If you have older hardware and stay on XP you do this at your own peril, due to all the security issues.
Click to expand...
Windows 7 is optimized to run on old computers as well, have it installed on my 7 years old rig and it runs great(ok it doesnt feel like 7 running on i7 2600 but usable like with XP). So Athlon 64 X2 or C2D with 1-2 GB RAM greatly exceeds W7 requirements.
 
can you guys elaborate on all these security issues?

my xp machine is on 24/7 and connected to the web, I have zero problems.

everyone always says that, and then tells me how lucky I am to not have problems, and I think it's all just talk.,
 
Well, I finally gave up XP and installed Win 7 Ultimate mostly because it was gifted to me but, also, because I had recently upgraded my GPU and felt sheepish because I'd forgotten, XP doesn't support DX 11. I was impressed that during the installation, it found the current driver for my Creative sound card, which was skipping/looping in XP and, the current driver for my updated GPU without having to go the respective sites. I was also impressed that the win 7 drivers eliminated the poor performance from my sound card. I was less than impressed by the 58 or 59 updates that widows performed which took longer than the original install.
 
Acer_Sheep said:
Windows 7 is optimized to run on old computers as well, have it installed on my 7 years old rig and it runs great(ok it doesnt feel like 7 running on i7 2600 but usable like with XP). So Athlon 64 X2 or C2D with 1-2 GB RAM greatly exceeds W7 requirements.
Click to expand...
When I had 7 on my 5 year old laptop with 1gb RAM, it ran like crap...lol. I went straight to Best Buy and got the cheapest thumb drive they had to run ReadyBoost and it made a world a difference..*shrugs*

Now, I really just use Windows in a virtual environment and I use XP because it needs less resources.
 
stealthy123 said:
it does too in about a week. maybe 2 weeks.

WINSXS just gets more and more bloated with time.
Click to expand...

I have a 1.5 year 7 install on a 40 GB SSD (37 GB) with 10 free at all times and that's with a bunch of apps installed.
 
stealthy123 said:
I run every operating system microsoft has released since ME.

I still prefer XP. For a single user, who doesn't randomly download crap or run .exe that someone emailed me, it's more than fine.

Win7 is okay, I don't like that my operating system takes up 40-60 gigs. XP loads can be under a gig.
Click to expand...

You try running WIndows 95-NT4/Apple OS 8.5/9 on a Novell 3.12/Novell 4.0 network mandated by our corporate bosses. (Advertising Agency Enviorment, Creative people had Mac's / Managment and Account people ran Windows, but NT was still not allowed on our network.) I had machines with disk sizes so small that the main OS's were hugely bloated. The extensions folder alone in an Mac OS 8/9 were aproaching 1gb in sizes. The problem was then HD's were still somewhat expensive back in the mid 90's and smallish. It was not until around 96 that you first started to see the 1GB drives for cheap.

The greatest day in my life was when Windows 2000/XP was around. I could have hundreds of machines dead and all I had to do was have my trusty Norton Ghost image and BAM, machine ready to go :) It is even better with WIndows 7 and Mac OS X now...

Those were the good old days of IT support. :p
 
stealthy123 said:
explorer says my win 7 install is 37 gig, and I just went through trimming 8 gigs out of it couple days ago.

I don't know if I run too much hard ware, but every single time winsxs gets freaking huge.

I honestly find it hard to believe anyone has a win7 install that takes up less than 20 gig, so good for you.
Click to expand...
You keep complaining about the WinSxS folder without having a clue how it works.

The WinSxS folder is mostly full of symlinks to other files scattered around your hard disk. When you check the properties of the WinSxS folder, it gets the file size of the file that each Symlink points to (the symlinks themselves take up practically no space at all).

Your WInSxS folder only adds a couple hundred megabytes to disk usage, not the false "multiple gigabytes" that checking the folder properties says.
 
stealthy123 said:
can you guys elaborate on all these security issues?

my xp machine is on 24/7 and connected to the web, I have zero problems.

everyone always says that, and then tells me how lucky I am to not have problems, and I think it's all just talk.,
Click to expand...

Well, I would read Devil22's post above, as he summed it up pretty well.

devil22 said:
But in general, XP is missing some key security features, like ASLR which when combined with DEP is a vital security feature against exploits. Win 7 also does sandboxing of the browser, so even if you get exploited, the exploit can't auto-run or mess with user files. Not to mention all the little things like ACL'ed services, file/folder virtualization so you can run apps as standard user that weren't meant to, patchguard and driver signing to twart rootkits if you run x64 (which is much easier for win 7 than XP), and so on. You could be careful with XP and lucky and not get infected but for average users Win 7's protections are a much better option.
Click to expand...

What I'll add to his list of features is UAC.

It was hated at first because it can be frustrating to have to enter your password whenever you want to make system changes, but it is IMHO one of the best protections in Vista/Win7. Some turn UAC off, but doing so is terribly moronic.

It keeps user and system processes much more separate than Windows XP ever did, even when running as a limited user.

Whenever you are running as an administrator there is the chance that some program can get access and install itself on your machine. UAC introduces linux style user rights, forcing you to enter a password when a change is being made that potentially could be malicious.

As he said, it is possible to keep an XP machine clean, but it takes a lot of vigilance, more so than even most seasoned users like people in these forums are willing to keep up with.

I've had Windows 7 in my house since launch two + years ago on two desktops and three laptops being used by users ranging from borderline computer illiterate (the type that would click on any link) up to my own level. In that time I have not had a single infection of any type on any of the machines.

Before on XP (I skipped Vista due to the launch problems tainting my impression of it) I would find several infections on the less experienced users machines even after only a week of use. I even had a couple over a several year period on a machine I used exclusively, and I am very careful.

Infections are simply a way of life with XP. It's better now than during the IE6 days, but you are still going to get them no matter what, and have to scan for malware and viruses on a regular basis.

There are still some exploits that allow things to get in on Windows 7 machines without the user doing anything wrong, but they are very rare, and usually get patched immediately. So its still a good idea to scan for virus/malware occasionally, but nowhere near as needed as under XP.

It only takes one malicious keystroke logger to swipe your debit card number, allowing someone to charge $8,000 in narcotic pharmaceuticals and fine watches in Panama City. Sure, the bank gives you the money back, but in the meantime you miss a couple of mortgage payments and Bank of America puts you in foreclosure wrecking your credit and damned near costing you your house. (Ask me how I know)

After an experience like that you go from being casual about computer security to being a computer security Nazi overnight.
 
XP is just so unpleasant to use now. After having used Vista and now 7 for five years now going back to XP reminds me of when I was tooling around with Ubuntu 5 and comparing that to XP from a usability standpoint. Just the Aero features in 7 make productivity so much more streamlined and when Vista introduced the little preview windows that too was a simple yet important step forward. Using XP at this point is nothing but a nostalgia fest which always ends bittersweet because it reminds me of how much XP didn't do in comparison.
 
If MS will give me a copy of Win7 for free, then I'll upgrade. I'm too cheap to pay for a copy, and too honest to pirate it, and XP is working fantastic for me now. Sure, it ain't perfect, but if something goes wrong, it's easy to fix, and I don't have to worry about my OS getting in the way. Chances are in another year or so I'll chuck XP on my machine and head for the Ubuntu highlands.
 
Acer_Sheep said:
Windows 7 is optimized to run on old computers as well, have it installed on my 7 years old rig and it runs great(ok it doesnt feel like 7 running on i7 2600 but usable like with XP). So Athlon 64 X2 or C2D with 1-2 GB RAM greatly exceeds W7 requirements.
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I was actually suprised when I loaded Windows 7 32 bit & Office 2010 on a 7 year old system in my office (P4, 2.4Ghz single core, 1GB ram, 40GB drive). It's noticably faster than my old XP/2003 image I've been using.

However, I don't think I'll be upgrading many of then due to how old they are.
I've been replacing the power users desktops with i5 quad cores, and will end up migrating some of the pulled dual core systems down the ladder (loaded with Windows 7 of course)

I did the same with a laptop roll-out last year. The power users got new i5 laptops, and the old dual-core laptops where re-imaged with windows 7 64 bit and passed down to other users. Windows 7 64 bit on these 3 year old laptops was a huge improvement over Vista 32 bit and even an improvement over XP, both in speed and stability.
 
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