Microsoft announces "end of life" date for Windows XP

My personal feeling is that it will be very dangerous to use a computer running XP to connect to the internet after support ends. But everyone should make their own risk/reward judgment.

Since I last posted in this thread in September I've transitioned to Ubuntu Linux from my XP computers. There is a good answer for using Netflix now and using the Windows emulator program Wine I've been able to run the XP programs I still need to. I will still keep an Ubuntu/XP dual boot setup for a while to make sure I haven't missed anything.

I have to say that it wasn't a seamless experience transitioning over and I ended up reinstalling the OS once. Thank goodness for solid backups! But I've learned a whole lot and in some ways I actually like Ubuntu better than XP.
 
If you are running Windows XP (like I am) and are considering an upgrade to Windows 8, you need to understand that your computer may not be able to support the upgrade. This is true not only of lightweight bargain computers from WalMart or whatever, but computers that were considered first-line when new, with plenty of RAM and hard drive space. Before you contemplate spending money on Windows 8, you need to check.

Microsoft has a Compatibility Checker which will check not only your computer, but also your devices (printers, CD and DVD drives, etc) and all of your applications (programs). You download the program, let it run - it takes a while - and it will give you the results, good or bad.

I have five computers that have run XP very successfully since it came out. One is a relatively old laptop, so I discount that. But four are first line machines as described above. In each case, the Compatibility Checker told me that I could not do a standard install of Windows 8, but would require a "special version" of the new OS. It didn't define "special", but I don't have a good feeling about it. It also told me that almost all of my programs would require updates, assuming they exist, and that most of my peripherals would not work. Hooray for Windows 8!

Needless to say, I will continue to run Windows XP for as long as I possibly can.

The Compatibility Checker can be found by going to
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/upgrade-assistant-download-online-faq
and clicking the blue rectangle labelled "Download Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant" (not the one labelled Windows 8.1).http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=321548

Hope this helps someone.

Bill
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=321548
 
Bill - I would also suggest checking compatibility with a Win 7 upgrade. 7 will be supported until 2020 and has proven to be a stable OS.
 
I agree with MisterP that Windows 7 is a good system. Unfortunately, even though it will be supported for a long time, Microsoft officially stopped selling it late last year. So it will be a little more difficult to find a legal copy to install. But there are still copies around at various retailers.
 
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The reliability/stability/quality of MS's operating systems is very predictable -- you get a good one every other time. These are the major versions:

3.1 - great
95 - garbage
98 - great
Millenium/Me - garbage
XP - great
Vista - garbage
7 - great
8 - have not used myself, but have heard anecdotal reports of problems; in any event, clearly not as good as 7.

So following this reliable pattern, which spans about 25 years, I'd be in no rush to upgrade to 8.

Dave
 
Mr. P -

I'm under the impression that Windows 8 is nothing more than a smoother (read "design errors corrected") version of Windows 7. That being the case, I wouldn't expect the compatibility results for Win 7 to be much different from Win 8. And that is indeed the case. The compatibility checker first tells me that Windows Aero will not work. I think Aero is supposed to be one of the big features of Win 7 and 8, so I've lost that right out of the gate. Then I will need a custom install of a 32-bit version of Windows 7, after which I will have to reinstall all my programs. Then it tells me that many of my programs and devices won't work. They will have to be upgraded or replaced, including programs and devices that I have paid good money for.

For example, a particular annoyance is that my current versions of Microsoft Office won't work any more (but it assures me that a paid upgrade is available). 'Scuse me? I spend several hours each day using Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, and now Microsoft wants me to buy a new (and expensive) Operating System, which will kill my paid-for versions of Microsoft Office, and require me to buy a new version of Office from Microsoft? For several hundred dollars? Not today.

It is not my intent to bash Microsoft or the new operating systems. I simply want to remind XP users that before you buy the new OS, be sure that it will work with your machine.

Bill
 
Daughter upgraded laptop, it came with windows 8. Didn't work well and she was thinking of going backwards to 7 when 8.1 was released. Likes it better but still not a happy camper. This summer I will make the transition to her windows 7 laptop and see what happens. I still keep an old 386 machine going to run DOS programs. Until I get 7 figured out we'll keep running XP.
 
Bill said:
Mr. P -

I'm under the impression that Windows 8 is nothing more than a smoother (read "design errors corrected") version of Windows 7. That being the case, I wouldn't expect the compatibility results for Win 7 to be much different from Win 8. And that is indeed the case. The compatibility checker first tells me that Windows Aero will not work. I think Aero is supposed to be one of the big features of Win 7 and 8, so I've lost that right out of the gate. Then I will need a custom install of a 32-bit version of Windows 7, after which I will have to reinstall all my programs. Then it tells me that many of my programs and devices won't work. They will have to be upgraded or replaced, including programs and devices that I have paid good money for.

For example, a particular annoyance is that my current versions of Microsoft Office won't work any more (but it assures me that a paid upgrade is available). 'Scuse me? I spend several hours each day using Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, and now Microsoft wants me to buy a new (and expensive) Operating System, which will kill my paid-for versions of Microsoft Office, and require me to buy a new version of Office from Microsoft? For several hundred dollars? Not today.

It is not my intent to bash Microsoft or the new operating systems. I simply want to remind XP users that before you buy the new OS, be sure that it will work with your machine.

Bill
Click to expand...

Bill -

I totally agree with your comment to check compatibility before any upgrade. I am not a MS expert, I hate Windows and run a Mac. That being said, I have one PC I bought for a job, and it runs Win 7. Other than the large number of security updates it has every time I turn it on, it is a stable platform.

As far as Office, I quit buying it long ago and run Apache Open Office on the PC and Mac. The key for others to use documents from Open Office is to save them as the equivalent MS Office document. So, if I write a letter I want someone else to read, I save it as a Word document. You can also save to PDF if that is your preference. Once you get used to the differences, you might find Open Office useful.

Paul
 
Started making the transition to Win 7; what a pain finally got Garmins Basecamp and Mapsource working. In the process I even got the old NUVI 550 to accept a mapset up date. The work continues migrating Book marks and email address books from the XP machine. Price was right on the Win 7 machine, it was one our daughter was no longer using:D
 
Picked up a new Toshiba from Best Buy, win 8.1, wanted them to set up but they weren't interested. Got home; took 20 minutes to figure out how to get it to recognize a flash drive:confused: Then went to install my anti virus software, cant there is an unactivated copy of McAfee installed and you can't delete it turns out until you first activate it:mad: To late already tryed to use control panel...nothing happens:new_all_cBack to best buy tomorrow with the laptop. I hate getting a new computer.
 
Did you go to Control Panel>Programs and Features and uninstall it there ? If not there it is not installed so can just delete the whole McAfee directory in C:\Program Files (x86)
 
Padgett said:
Did you go to Control Panel>Programs and Features and uninstall it there ? If not there it is not installed so can just delete the whole McAfee directory in C:\Program Files (x86)
Click to expand...
Yes as I mentioned in my above post you can't just go to control panel any more to remove some uactivated preloaded software. Some of it has to do with the new anti theft protocals that come with new computers. Some and McAfee is one from what I found on the internet lock the computer so it can't be used.
 
Say what ? Lessee I have five computers and tabs with 8.1 and a desktop and a tab running Win 10 and Win 10 Enterprise (also a gaggle with Win 7, one XP, two luggables with DOS 6.0. And then there are the Androids, and the Macs and the iPad (don't have an iPhone my smart watch only works with Android), and a few instances of Linux). My first PC was a VAX & played my first compuer game in 1957.

Is what pays for the TM but generally do not mention that.

Meanwhile I have had trouble getting rid of unwanted software before but not McAfee. True sometimes you need to grab system privilege to dump. What exactly is your problem ?

ps just realized with the new versions of Windows they try to make you use a cloud account with little real access. I always skip that and create a local admin account first thing, only use my MS account to access MSDN.
 
Scrubjaysnest, I had to bite the bullet too and get a new laptop. I hated to give up my XP operating system, but you do what you gotta do. I just bought an interesting hybrid tablet/laptop (Lenovo Yoga Pro 3) this past weekend and it runs Windows 8.1. I installed Webroot security software and to get rid of McAfee that came on it all I had to do was right click on the McAfee tile and it had an Uninstall option and that got rid of it.
 
Win 8 is not very popular, for the kind of reasons you are experiencing. I wonder if BestBuy would consider removing Win 8 and installing a registered copy of Win 7 in its place?

Bill
 
Whenever you buy a computer from a large brick/mortar store and online retailer, you can expect for it to be plagued with the "trickware", and as some of you have experienced, it can be a pain to get rid of and reconfigure your machine.

Fortunately, there are alternatives, short of building your own machine. Find a smaller computer builder, and buy from them -- they are not paid by McAfee, Netzero, Ask.com, etc. to put all garbage on there, so they don't. And they will put whatever OS you want on there. And while they won't sell you a $400 laptop, they are fairly competitive if you want something other than a bare-bones machine.

As I get older, I have far less patience for mind games, sales gimmicks, and crappy customer service, and find myself more than happy to pay a few extra bucks to be able to talk to a straight-shooting sales rep that isn't in India AND that I can consistently call after the first call. Same with tech support, or any other business, for that matter (don't get me started on cell phones).

I bought my last computer from Maingear.com and had a good experience. No affiliation with them, of course.

Dave
 
Win 8.1 is a free upgrade from 8 and makes it easy to boot to desktop. Right click on the start square also brings up a lot of things like shut down (do not need to pull up a charm).

To me the metro interface is best suited to a small touch screen tablet but desktop is a lot better if you have a keyboard and mouse.

I was hoping for a tablet I could use both in my car and at home with a dock but the latest examples are leaving out the GPS. To me a tab without GPS is just dumb.

Win 10 seems more like Win 7 on steroids.
 
Bill said:
Win 8 is not very popular, for the kind of reasons you are experiencing. I wonder if BestBuy would consider removing Win 8 and installing a registered copy of Win 7 in its place?

Bill
Click to expand...

+1, on Windows 7. We just upgraded to a new computer from eBay. We had Vista on our old one, so needless to say we're much happier with 7. Definitely more user friendly.
 
cmboyd said:
Scrubjaysnest, I had to bite the bullet too and get a new laptop. I hated to give up my XP operating system, but you do what you gotta do. I just bought an interesting hybrid tablet/laptop (Lenovo Yoga Pro 3) this past weekend and it runs Windows 8.1. I installed Webroot security software and to get rid of McAfee that came on it all I had to do was right click on the McAfee tile and it had an Uninstall option and that got rid of it.
Click to expand...
We looked at those but never heard of the brand so went with the Toshiba which we have always had good service with.
Unfortunately Lenovo I just learned has a contract to load their Pokki software on new machines. You can't tell the difference between it and the malware of the same name. It also loaded like malware and didn't give you a choice. Now if we keep the machine there are 11 more programs to get ride of.
For now I can give a +1 for my daughters old win 7 machine; it will see a flash drive when you plug it in on like win 8.1 which took me 20 minutes and two trips to the internet; the first gave wrong instructions, but I got it to see the drive finally. Still wasn't able to load my anti virus software because of McAfee already n the machine and now way to remove it. You know it's bad when someone puts a 8 minute youtube video up on how to remove it.
 
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