I go way back with computers before MS came out with Windows. I have used every version from 1.0 to 10 (excepting Vista), and only recently had to get a new laptop with he latter.
IMHO, XP was by far the best (or least worst) of 'em all. W10 is an abomination but with sledge hammer and crowbar, I have tamed the sucker into working much like XP did
I did not mind that MS stopped supporting it and adding patches, as I ran three anti malware programs daily, even though many say that can’t be done. Once I got Norton and all its many intrusions uninstalled.
So, any diehards still out there? You youngsters won’t even know what I am talking about I suspect.
We have a small handful of legacy machines running XP at work. IT would love for us to get rid of them but there a no resources to rewrite the programs that are used on them.
I still have a couple of machines running Windows XP hooked up to some random equipment. Why? Because I cannot be bothered to upgrade them, or to find out if the software used still runs on later versions of Windows or Linux.
It doesn’t self-destruct, but be aware that many programs (e.g., Firefox) refuse to keep supporting it. That doesn’t matter if it’s just hooked up to an oscilloscope or similar, but I wouldn’t recommend installing it on a brand-new laptop (if Windows is an abomination, there are alternatives).
I used it up until a few months ago when my motherboard began having problem. After reading a lot of reviews I settled on Windows 7 32 bit, not the 64. I hate to admit it but it is much superior to XP.
The security problems for running an XP computer connected to the Internet would be huge. Even worse, MS will publish known security problems but no longer supports the fixes for them, so hackers know exactly where to look for the vulnerabilities.
I still use it for my virtual machine on OS X.
I detest Windows, and try to avoid using it whenever possible, but there are occasionally tools I need to run on it.
Rarely these days.
Thanks be to God there is someone else out there that thinks like that. I am not very tech savvy, and I do not need to do anything fancy, just surf the net and send email. It is not broken, why fix it?
I still have one machine that uses XP and I agree with the OP about it. This machine is used for one purpose only: to run slides in our seminar room that has a display adapter that needs the VGA port that that old machine has. Bring you slides on a memory stick, boot, plug in the stick and VGA adapter and you are in business. I don’t think our university network even allows an XP machine to connect.
My brother owns an accounting firm and the accounting software he uses only runs on XP. I’ve tried various solutions to get it to play on newer Windows but apparently it uses some direct system calls that just don’t exist any more. Bro absolutely hates all the modern alternatives to the software so I’ll just keep on until he retires in a few years.
I’ve set up a server with multiple XP virtual machines that have no internet access for his office to use with the software. 8 gig virtual hard drives with 1 gig ram and XP runs like greased lightning.
We still have a quasi-functional desktop running Win 98. It has some of our favorite games on it. It’s getting very temperamental, however, and often refuses to recognize it’s drives. I expect it’s on its last legs. We also have a functional XP machine, but I only turn it on when I want to see my quit smoking stats.
Because it largely is broken by people finding new vulnerabilities, either in Windows itself, or in the latest browser version that will run on your platform.
Plus the web is ever changing, so old browsers start to have trouble.
I agree with the maxim, and I use old OSes longer than most. But old stuff with computers does break if the computer goes online.
98 was better, because with 98 you could hook anything to any process. You could replace any part of the OS with something custum. For example, do you like UAC? I think it sucks, and I thought it sucked when implemented in '98, which third parties did of course, because third parties could add that kind of functionality to '98… Not enough memory? You could of course buy third-party memory expanders, because third parties could add that kind of functionality to '98. What else… yes you could. The framework was open.
Yes, that made it more open to malware, and yes, that made it easier to crash, but for actual usefulness it was unmatched. Also was poor with real-time (although mostly good enough with third party real-time components) but I never needed 98 to be real time.
Had to give up when I needed unsupported hardware. And, like XP, limited to 2TB drives.
Still have some 98 and XP at work. And Win2K. For a user, Win2K is XP, only smaller and faster. (an import difference was that it was compiled with an earlier library version, so XP updates are not compatible)
Got it going in VirtualBox on this computer right now.
The next closest thing is a laptop that has it that I drag out once in a great while when I need a machine running an old OS that has stuff, e.g., a parallel port*, in order to play with something.
It has no reason to connect to the Internet.
(The last time I did this was to transfer songs to a Rio PMP300.)
The XP machines are either air gapped or heavily limited in their access. I don’t understand this stuff well enough to elaborate further but IT would love to get rid of them but gave been overruled.
XP? Forget that…I have three laptops that I still run Win2K on. I have three more laptops and two desktops that run only WinXP.
One of the reasons for this is that I have hardware for which there are no Win7 drivers. I also work a lot with file viewers and editors that will not run on anything later than WinXP (or Win2K). Lots of very knowledgeable people tell me that I CAN run all of these on 32-bit Win7. They’re wrong.
Win7 and Win8/10 have a lot of advantages over WinXP (including decent security), but WinXP has several features and behaviors that I still value.
