Facing the Windows XP apocalypse ?

[sinetheo]

Give it a try?

 

Core2duo is the bottom line for ok Windows 7 performance and was standard in 2009 when Windows 7 was released. It is tuned for that cpu as the icore's came out just afterwards. Pentium IV's I would not bother but people have successfully ran it on them believe it or not. 

 

Also Windows XP has no hardware acceleration anyway. GDI is not GDI+ like in Windows Vista and higher. IE 9 was very usable on this system with hardware acceleration on. Just flickered a little as long as no more than 1 ad or flash video was on it was ok. 

 

Windows7 is the new XP and will be used for many years to come. My father has a core2duo with an intel gma 945 chipset. I put Windows 7 on it for him last summer. It works. It has 2 gigs of ram and occasionally it can get slowed down with hardware accelerated flash ads if you has more than 4 tabs opened. But for his needs it is fine. 

 

Yes he would still be using XP today if I didn't upgrade him. There was no reason to change other than security issues. So I can see why many still use that aging OS. Baby boomers make up a significant part of the population. Corporations too are very cheap and see no point in upgrading and spending lots of money and increasing risk for something that does what they alread have?! 

 

They will wait until 2019 to even start upgrading today and blame MS and not themselves as usual.

[Dot Matrix]

Baby boomers make up a significant part of the population. Corporations too are very cheap and see no point in upgrading and spending lots of money and increasing risk for something that does what they alread have?! 

 

They will wait until 2019 to even start upgrading today and blame MS and not themselves as usual.

What corporations are these? Because I know of no corporations like this. Corporations are always upgrading. There is no choice in the matter, you upgrade or you die, especially in today's competitive markets. Your customers are expecting it.

 

And again, baby boomers aren't immune. They may make up a significant part, but not in the IT workplace. Where I work, younger IT techs out number older workers by a factor of 10 to 1. The "I'm old" clause isn't going to save them for having to learn new things.  

[sinetheo]

What corporations are these? Because I know of no corporations like this. Corporations are always upgrading. There is no choice in the matter, you upgrade or you die, especially in today's competitive markets. Your customers are expecting it.

 

And again, baby boomers aren't immune. They may make up a significant part, but not in the IT workplace. Where I work, younger IT techs out number older workers by a factor of 10 to 1. The "I'm old" clause isn't going to save them for having to learn new things.  

Every one I worked for fights change I guess. lol

 

It is fine with me as I will charge a premium next month to fix it as I charge well after 40 hours a week :-)

 

... their loss.

 

But to get the mentality of these customers you need to look at it through a business point of view. I have a bachelors in business. Picture a suitcase with 5 million dollars in it sitting on a corporate board room table? 

 

The CEO has a choice on what to do with it with each of the board who are sitting around it:

1. Keep it. The controller takes it and deposits it. The shareprice goes up for the quarter and the CEO gets a nice bonus and short term gains. 

+3 million of new cash from Wall Street goes in due to the shareprice going up.

 

2. Give it to the CFO who will pay off debt. Short term no gains. Medium term some cash. Long term +7 million saved in interest from lines of credit

 

3. Give it to the COO. He purchases new equipment and trucks. Production goes up 7% + maintance goes down %5. Net profit and savings + 11 million

 

4. Give to the Marketing/sales department. New advertising compaign plus 2 more sales people bring in +10 million

 

5. Give to the CIO. -5 million. 0 return on investment. Maybe 1 million saved just in case you got a bad infection and needed a consultant??!

 

You are the CEO? Which option will you pick? Yes you must upgrade XP only after 13 years so you save the cash and pick#1 and wait until the last minute before spending the 5 million to upgrade.

 

Some software can increase productivity yes but an OS is no longer one of them. Successful companies are ones who invest in the right things. Bad companies are ones who invest in technology. I have studies in business school which show this. Guess what? They are also my bosses.

[Dot Matrix]

Bad companies are ones who invest in technology.

Bad companies are the companies who don't invest in technology. You won't be in business long without it. A good company doesn't wait to upgrade all at once. A successful company upgrades in waves.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I take it you work with older machines that don't run well with these effects enabled?

 

No even New machines. Try it sometime. Turn off JUST the Animations and fades. When you open windows up windows feels MUCH more snappy. It's not that the hardware cant handle the effects, it's the millisecond worth of animation that turning it off gets rid of.

Sinetheo, You should really take back that "XP is just as productive as 8, so why change?" Because, that is in no way true.

 

So just to be clear, you are saying security vulnerable aside, EVERYONE should upgrade to 7 or 8, even if what they have is working fine for them so they can be more productive?

[Dot Matrix]

So just to be clear, you are saying security vulnerable aside, EVERYONE should upgrade to 7 or 8, even if what they have is working fine for them so they can be more productive?

Not everyone. If some poor sap wants to continue running XP at home, let them. Whatever. But I believe there should be no XP machines remaining in use on the business side of things. It's not going to do anyone any good to become complacent in workplace IT, as Sinetheo seems to be suggesting.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Not everyone. If some poor sap wants to continue running XP at home, let them. Whatever. But I believe there should be no XP machines remaining in use on the business side of things. It's not going to do anyone any good to become complacent in workplace IT, as Sinetheo seems to be suggesting.

 

The discontinuation of security updates aside, why would someone be a poor sap if they are running XP?

[FloatingFatMan]

So Windows 7 is the last of the road for a core2duo. Aero works fine for intel gma 945 and up. Windows 8 ... not so much as video cards sold as late as 2011 are not supported which ticked me off. We will see if ATi play the same game with directX12 and Windows 9 in the coming weeks when MS gives us the beta?

 

My guess is it too will have issues like that youtube video before release as drivers are still a work in process.

 

What  a complete load of nonsense.  My old E8400 C2D and Radeon HD 5770 run Windows 8 slicker th'n snot. The 5770 is still supported in the latest Catalysts too, and it came out in 2009.

 

I just upgraded to an i5 and passed my older machine to my son, but there's really not a huge amount of speed difference between the two, especially in gaming. The 5770 can still keep up with just about any game I've ever tried on it and it boots from POST to desktop in 8 seconds thanks to the SSD in it.

[REM2000]

The discontinuation of security updates aside, why would someone be a poor sap if they are running XP?

 

They will eventually experience a lot of problems, the first would be that some apps will stop working with XP, browsers are likely to be the first. Ok they may not care about updates for XP, however updates for their browser would be cause for concern. Other apps will eventually start requiring Windows Vista and above, things like .net will only be released (i.e 5, then 6 etc..) for modern support OS's. Then they will have printers which may stop dropping support, hardware such as USB 4 or whatever comes next after three. 

 

this is more directed to the thread,

 

XP is gonna be harder to kill than previous versions of windows as there was a larger gap between Vista and XP, the bad release of Vista meant for a lot of people the gap was between XP (2001) and 7 (2009) so the product has been out in the market place for longer meaning it become more entrenched. Business work on the model of if it's not broke dont fix it which is perfectly understandable as a business is to make money not to support IT or an IT Department, if a product doesn't add value then why bother. 

 

Microsoft had/has the same problem with Exchange 5.5, it has taken ages to finally bring that product under control and upgraded. 

 

The problem with a lot of Microsoft products is that they usually require a complete fresh install, the upgrade paths are usually not available and if they are they are very shaky, it's why a lot of people put it off. Microsoft seriously need to work harder to make it easier to do in-place upgrades of both OS's and server products. 

[Livin in a box]

On our government contract at work, we're still using XP. Some of you might have heard about the "transforming rehabilitation" that's about to happen in June of this year in the UK - and guess what - there are no plans at all to move from Windows XP.