Windows XP or Win 7-8

[rktman]

How many dinosaurs are out there (like me) that still use Win XP?

Are there any advantages to Win 7 or 8?

 

[snickerd3]

XP at home and at the office. Will stay that way until the operating system dies because there are no more patches to support it. Work will likely be the same way seeing as the next round of computers were bought awhile ago and are sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting for the state to get their asses together and get to installing them.

 

[Flyer_PE]

Still have a laptop and an old desk top machine running XP. Neither one is used all that often anymore. The rest of the computers are running Windows 7. I have very little experience with Windows 8 but so far I'm not impressed. It might be better if running a touch screen but ,IMHO, using it with a conventional keyboard and mouse sucks.

 

[knight1fox3]

How many dinosaurs are out there (like me) that still use Win XP?

Are there any advantages to Win 7 or 8?

LOL, I don't really know where to start with this one. There are numerous improvements to Win 7 over XP.

Being a system builder, I strongly recommend that you consider upgrading to 7 soon as XP support will be ending very soon. Meaning it will be much more susceptible to security threats (no more updates). Win 7 is a fantastic OS and has the same basic functionality that XP did. It runs very smoothly and has some nice new features as well. It won't cost you an arm & a leg to upgrade either ($90 on Amazon). Vast improvements have been made in the areas of stability, the system kernel, DirectX video support (10 & 11), overall system performance, and a much more user-friendly experience. I'm sure I sound like I work for MS but I don't. That's just my opinion of how XP compares to Win7 because I was once a pessimist about switching. Let's also not forget that most software and hardware manufacturers have stopped making XP drivers for their products and have migrated to Win7 and Win8 support.

As for Win8, unless your primary device utilizes a touch-screen interface, Win8 is quite a change in terms of interface and functionality. I don't feel that it is designed for the average desktop user. I'm sure it works great for tablets and smart phones.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

XP at home and office.

 

[blybrook PE]

Win 7 at home and office; still have one computer running XP; but its for Ham radio use only.

I would avoid 8 like the plague if possible unless your computer has a touch screen as mentioned above. There's a few tricks I've been finding to make Win8 look & act like Win7 which may make the best of both worlds (something you are used to and the newest OS).

Many of the softwares that are out there are still being updated to work on Win8, so best to stick with 7 for the time being.

 

[Flyer_PE]

^Garmin finally upgraded their software for updating the aviation databases so it will work on both 32 and 64 bit operating systems. Any chance thew will do the same for software you're using?

 

[knight1fox3]

I run XP at work and WIN7 on my personal laptop. The worst thing about WIN7 is that it won't run some of my 32-bit software; not even with all of its fancy backwards compatible settings - most notably, my personal copy of AutoCAD and my Garmin chartplotter software.

^Garmin finally upgraded their software for updating the aviation databases so it will work on both 32 and 64 bit operating systems. Any chance thew will do the same for software you're using?

We run into that with a number of legacy Rockwell software packages. But there's a simple way around it. You can run a WinXP virtual machine within Win7 and run the incompatible software that way. It's rather simple to do and there are plenty of VM software packages out there.

 

[Peele1]

There is no excuse for any vendor, such as Garmin, to not support 64-bit Windows Vista, 7, 8. XP-64 came out about a decade ago, and Vista came out 6 years ago. I moved to Vista-64 about 5 years ago, and dropped any program that didn't work in it. Interestingly enough, I found that not to be a real problem. Anything that didn't work I changed to a different, better supported product. Microsoft requires 64-bit compatibility for any certified program.

XP will cease to be updated in April of next year. If you do anything with protected, confidential, sensitive or whatever data, then you need to be off of XP by then, or you could be legally negligent.

Both users and vendors need to upgrade from XP sooner or later... Unfortunately, there are a LOT of proprietary applications, such as medical, sales/cash register, life safety, and building management that are still running XP, 2000, or older - check out this article. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/12/robots-iphones-and-windows-xp-a-personal-journey-through-hospital-it/ and this: http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/dexter-malware-steals-credit-card-data-from-point-of-sale-terminals/

 

[Peele1]

We run into that with a number of legacy Rockwell software packages. But there's a simple way around it. You can run a WinXP virtual machine within Win7 and run the incompatible software that way. It's rather simple to do and there are plenty of VM software packages out there.

Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise should come with "XP-mode", which runs a vm. Or, VMWare Player works well for VM, and my favorite is VirtualBox from Sun/Oracle. VirtualBox can even let the graphics card drivers pass-through allowing for graphics intensive tasks like games.

 

[MA_PE]

We run into that with a number of legacy Rockwell software packages. But there's a simple way around it. You can run a WinXP virtual machine within Win7 and run the incompatible software that way. It's rather simple to do and there are plenty of VM software packages out there.

Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise should come with "XP-mode", which runs a vm. Or, VMWare Player works well for VM, and my favorite is VirtualBox from Sun/Oracle. VirtualBox can even let the graphics card drivers pass-through allowing for graphics intensive tasks like games.

I have an XP vm on my work computer running Win7. The only limitation I've found so far is that in the vm I can't see the USB ports.

 

[blybrook PE]

The USB ports are there in the Win7 VM; you just have to take control of them using the toolbar dropdown.