Surviving XP’s Final Days

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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InformationWeek put up a guide for shops and users that are clinging on to Windows XP until Windows 7 releases. If you count yourself in this number, check the tips out.

So what to do in the time between now and the eventual-and-probably-inevitable move to Windows 7? Protect your existing PC investment, prepare for what's next, and don't let anything derail you along the way.
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First two pages seem to exaggerate the problems with XP a bit. My Netbook runs TinyXP just fine.. no need to reformat or clean anything and I can install any (legit and trusted) software I want without worrying about a "damaged registry" or "conflicting system settings" etc. What do those things mean anyway? I don't even have any anti-virus software installed since I scan over the network from my desktop rig. Never had a virus or any other malware on it so far.

I might install Win7 on my Netbook if it's as good on low-end hardware as people claim. I just don't think it can ever match the speed of my tweaked XP install. I mean, sure Microsoft removed much of the bloat that Vista added, but then again, XP didn't have any of that bloat in the first place. Its minimum requirements are 233MHz CPU, 1.5GB hard drive space and 64MB of RAM. Not that it would be usable on such a machine, but the Win7 beta, by comparison, calls for a 1 GHz CPU, 16GB of harddrive space and 1 gig of RAM :p
 
XP's "final days" are still years away, pretty much limited by software support.
 
After using windows 7 I don't think XP's final days are very soon. I may just be old fashioned though.
 
I'll guess that XP will be around a lot longer than Vista AFTER W7 is released. I know I'll keep XP running on my laptop (it previously had Vista but I dumped it) as well as my garage computer. I don't see much point holding onto Vista.
 
Define final days?

For my sister who is technologically impaired and can't even boil water properly (what a woman she is, eh, eh?), Windows 98 (non-SE) was not at its final days when the computer itself died a dusty death this February.

For me, hairy old nerd, Windows 98SE hit its final days after I realized that torrents really wasted its TCP/IP stack. Windows 2000 hit its final days when I finally got an LCD in 2007 and needed ClearType to see anything at all.

What are the limits of XP? DX9, support and drivers ending in 3~ years? I'm going W7 just because I want in on something new right at the start, XP's going to live on in a spare computer or a netbook for me.
 
I'll keep XP on my laptop, and desktop until I get a more powerful computer.
 
Bah.. XP's final days are a ways off, especially for users who have older machines that run just fine and would no handle anything over XP good at all.

I even have a machine that still runs Win98SE. It is my retro gaming machine. Have to have DOS and WIN98SE because a lot of older games either require DOS or just have issues with XP or higher.

And besides, it has a 3dfx V5-5500 and a SB Awe-64 Gold in it.. it was meant for Win98SE.
 
Half my workplace is still running Windows 2000 with seemingly little willingness to upgrade; at least until extended support for 2000 runs out next year.
 
cyclone3d said:
Bah.. XP's final days are a ways off, especially for users who have older machines that run just fine and would no handle anything over XP good at all.

I even have a machine that still runs Win98SE. It is my retro gaming machine. Have to have DOS and WIN98SE because a lot of older games either require DOS or just have issues with XP or higher.

And besides, it has a 3dfx V5-5500 and a SB Awe-64 Gold in it.. it was meant for Win98SE.
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Just because you still use something doesn't mean it hasn't reached its final days.

My dad almost daily uses a 100mhz Win95 system...
 
Am I the only one who thinks that article is stupid? So for the past 8 years it's been ok to have your system bloated with crap, but oh no Windows 7 is almost out so you better uninstall stuff you don't use anymore for the final days!1!1!1
 
JimmiG said:
First two pages seem to exaggerate the problems with XP a bit. My Netbook runs TinyXP just fine.. no need to reformat or clean anything and I can install any (legit and trusted) software I want without worrying about a "damaged registry" or "conflicting system settings" etc. What do those things mean anyway? I don't even have any anti-virus software installed since I scan over the network from my desktop rig. Never had a virus or any other malware on it so far.

I might install Win7 on my Netbook if it's as good on low-end hardware as people claim. I just don't think it can ever match the speed of my tweaked XP install. I mean, sure Microsoft removed much of the bloat that Vista added, but then again, XP didn't have any of that bloat in the first place. Its minimum requirements are 233MHz CPU, 1.5GB hard drive space and 64MB of RAM. Not that it would be usable on such a machine, but the Win7 beta, by comparison, calls for a 1 GHz CPU, 16GB of harddrive space and 1 gig of RAM :p
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Do you have any idea what you are talking about? XP was VERY heavy six years ago when it came out. Compared to the big OSes of the time (2K, ME, 98SE) it was incredibly bloated.
 
Derangel said:
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? XP was VERY heavy six years ago when it came out. Compared to the big OSes of the time (2K, ME, 98SE) it was incredibly bloated.
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Eight years rather, got my dates mixed up with something else I was looking at while typing.
 
Final Days... lol

There's still businesses on Windows 2000. XP won't be going away anytime soon.
 
Derangel said:
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? XP was VERY heavy six years ago when it came out. Compared to the big OSes of the time (2K, ME, 98SE) it was incredibly bloated.
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Yes, it was. I'm not arguing that. I've had the unfortunately pleasure of working with XP on a machine with 128MB of RAM (which was fine for Win98 and even Win2k), so I know very well what I'm talking about.

But like you say, that was *eight years* ago. So even though XP was considered "heavy" and "bloated" in 2001, it's a very lightweight OS today, running on current hardware. That's why even low-end netbooks make XP fly - a typical netbook with a 1.6 GHz Atom (-equivalent), 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive would have been cutting edge in 2001. Most people were running sub-GHz CPUs and if your system had more than 512MB of RAM, people either thought you worked for NASA or simply had more money than brains.

So, my point is that Win7, even though it's a "light" OS by today's standards, will be "heavier" than the eight years old WinXP. That's despite the fact that XP was considered very bloated eight years ago. The storage space, CPU and RAM requirements of Win7 are just way beyond those of WinXP.
 
JimmiG said:
Yes, it was. I'm not arguing that. I've had the unfortunately pleasure of working with XP on a machine with 128MB of RAM (which was fine for Win98 and even Win2k), so I know very well what I'm talking about.

But like you say, that was *eight years* ago. So even though XP was considered "heavy" and "bloated" in 2001, it's a very lightweight OS today, running on current hardware. That's why even low-end netbooks make XP fly - a typical netbook with a 1.6 GHz Atom (-equivalent), 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive would have been cutting edge in 2001. Most people were running sub-GHz CPUs and if your system had more than 512MB of RAM, people either thought you worked for NASA or simply had more money than brains.

So, my point is that Win7, even though it's a "light" OS by today's standards, will be "heavier" than the eight years old WinXP. That's despite the fact that XP was considered very bloated eight years ago. The storage space, CPU and RAM requirements of Win7 are just way beyond those of WinXP.
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A friend of mine has Win 7 on his brother's netbook and they both say it runs faster than XP. I'm not sure exactly which netbook it is though, I'd have to ask him again.
 
For me, Windows XP will be fine as far as basic computer usage goes, for users like my parents who doesn't need any cool aero interface or DirextX 10. Web browsing, email, and word processor works fine on XP, so no need for any new OS.

I'll get Win 7 with my next PC, till then, I'm fine with my XP right now.
 
As long as their are ignorant people who won't change OS's due to the fact they can't accept change, not even windows ME will ever have its 'final days'.
 
I'm typing this from a Windows 7 machine. 7 will, and rightfully so, receive a ton of praise as a solid operating system. Those who are looking to upgrade from XP or replace XP machines are in for a system shock if they think that 7 is going to be magically "more like XP". I explain to the average user every single day that function wise Vista is more like XP than 7 is, and use screenshots and videos of the interface to back it up.

To those looking to skip 7- XP 32 won't see more than 3.5 gigs of RAM and XP 64's support is worse than Vista's. For your sake I hope cloud computing takes over sooner than later, and I hope that the browsers you use support XP several years from now.
 
lathode said:
Am I the only one who thinks that article is stupid? So for the past 8 years it's been ok to have your system bloated with crap, but oh no Windows 7 is almost out so you better uninstall stuff you don't use anymore for the final days!1!1!1
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That was the first thing I though of also when I started reading this. What the hell does any of that have to do with free XP support ending in a few weeks? You should do most of that anyway. You should keep your machine clean of crapware, you should go through your programs every now and then to uninstall anything you don't need. As far as randomly installing stuff you don't need, that doesn't really matter.

Overall you are pretty much in the same conditon now as you were before. Besides how many people actually call microsoft for support? If you know what you are doing you fix it yourself and look online for any support that you need for new problems you come accross. If you are not a tech person then you either 1) call the company you got the machine from is it is stil under stuport or 2) you ask somebody that you know that knows about computers or 3) you take it into a shop.

Overall I think this article is just a bunch of shit.
 
XP is still fine for at least a couple of years, and especially for basic things. Secondly a big part of old classic games don't really work any good, or without fixes beyond XP. If your constantly buying new hardware and want to stay on the top, then an upgrade would probably be good.
 
im going to continue to use xp at the moment. mainly because i cannot afford a new OS.
 
I only have one machine using XP right now and it is my Netbook. I only use it because my tuning software works best with XP. I am planning on trying Win7 on it and try to tune my car with it. If it works well, I'll be done with XP. I do like XP, but I also like change and for media purposes, I really prefer Vista/Win7.

Everything else in my house is running Win7 or Vista.
 
I think the main issue with Xp and people who refuse to change is the huge lack of security on Xp.

Even if you have antivirus, you are still unsecure unless you don't run in admin mode, and not alot do that.

Anyone currently running Xp, or earlier Windows machines, are more susceptable to stuff like rootkits, konflicker, etc.

The only way you wouldn't be is if you had sense about security, but how many anti-Vista fanboys actually have that?
 
I've been banned from a few fanboy run forums, full of people who refuse to use Vista.

They went and sprouted off the same nonsense found on any fanboy blog: Vista has drm for content and xp doesn't, xp is more secure then vista, vista fucking sucks in general.

I got banned for refusing to go along with the fanboy circus.

My point in saying this is that alot of the issues today is self righteous idiots who think their right and refuse to try new things. These guys will be getting major viruses before everyone else, and they will fuck their experience over due to their own stupidity.

Xp was good, but I honestly would rather have security then ignorance.
 
^ To each his own good sir. Perhaps your lack of open mindedness was the cause of you being not wanted there.
 
Derangel said:
A friend of mine has Win 7 on his brother's netbook and they both say it runs faster than XP. I'm not sure exactly which netbook it is though, I'd have to ask him again.
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The performance of XP is dependent on how many background programs you're running. Maybe he was running a bogged down install of XP with lots of tray icons etc?

Can you make a clean install of Win7 use ~90MB of RAM after bootup? I've even got some of my virtual machines down to just over 70MB and they boot so fast it's almost like those "instant-on" OS's.

I can't try Win7 on my netbook, because it won't fit on the 8GB SSD (it needs 16GB). WinXP on the other hand leaves me with plenty of space for other things. Even with a whole bunch of applications installed on the SSD, I still have nearly 2GB free.

Maybe the actual release version of Win7 Basic will use less space (it would have to be less than 2GB, preferably under 1.5GB).

They would also have to minimize all those background disk operations that Vista does. They kill battery life in laptops and wear out SSD's.
 
GUI changes in Vista suck. Graphical part of it is fine, but everything else in Vista's interface are TERRIBLE. I'm a KDE fan, and I absolutely hate Gnome. XP's interface resembles KDE more than Gnome, while Vista resembles Gnome more than KDE.

It's a matter of personal taste and feel, not change.
 
MetalX said:
^ To each his own good sir. Perhaps your lack of open mindedness was the cause of you being not wanted there.
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Open mindedness?? There's quite a difference between opinion and fanboy bullshit. I don't care what some try to say about opinions not being wrong, if your opinion is wrong it is wrong!

Nazis had an opinion. Tell others to be open minded!
 
Err, sorry. I did nothing wrong, I simply told them to truth about Vista, they all told me Vista fucking sucks and banned me.

You really shouldn't be speaking about something you don't understand yourself.
 
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