MS extends virus signature support for XP

[vulcanised]

Bet mixture will be upset!

BBC News - Microsoft extends virus warnings for Windows XP to 2015

[Booglebox]

Nope. Misleading Beeb article and misleading post from you. Support ends in April. The extension is only for antimalware signature updates to products like MSE, System Centre Endpoint Security, etc.

I see now that your post title and the Beeb article have both been edited to reflect this

[FullOppositeRudder]

Here is an interesting report on the overall picture.

I whiled away yesterday's heat wave conditions (45c+) playing with the new installation of W7 destined to replace this machine.

It's not too bad with Classic Shell installed. I may even get to like it.

(I can't believe that I wrote that)

[mixture]

Sorry, I've been away on holiday... you know, that thing you do away from your computer, you should try it one day instead of posting poorly informed sarcastic comments !

As I've said on here innumerable times.... I don't give a flying what magic pixie dust security software you claim to be running on your obsolete good for nothing operating system after April...I repeat again, once (and hopefully for all) .....

If the operating system is not being updated then ***ANY*** software running on top of it inherits the vulnerabilities present in the documented and undocumented APIs etc. present in the OS itself. In summary, the software running on top of the OS is only as secure as the underlying OS itself.

Its not difficult to comprehend !

Rant over.

[sherburn2LA]

god forbid Mixture ever does anything really dangerous like going flying or shopping at Target.

[vulcanised]

Holiday doesn't improve his temprement.

[mixture]

going flying

Look at my choice of username. Might give you a little hint that I have done and/or do so.

or shopping at Target.

Wouldn't be seen dead shopping at so called "discount retailers" because of the gullible consumers they attract who can't sift the wheat from the chaff and fail to see the underlying business model which acts somewhat ruthlessly in the company's rather than consumer's interests.

But I digress...

Holiday doesn't improve his temprement.

I was in a perfectly good mood until I came back and read your post Mr Vulcanised.

To be honest, the reason for the tone of my post was I've repeated the gist of it so many times. People using XP after April are kidding themselves. The only safe XP machine after April will be one that is permanently disconnected from the internet.

[TURIN]

I'm a cheapskate.

Therefore is it worth my while getting an unused Vista 64 bit OS from somewhere and loading that on my steam driven laptop? There are one or two on ebay.

I am not precious. I just want to surf the web a bit, play a few videos and a bit of emailing now and again.
I can't justify a new laptop yet and I'm pretty sure Win 7 & 8 will not run on this thing.

I currently run Vista on my media centre PC and it's stable enough.

Any thoughts?

[KBPsen]

As of now Vista is supported until 4/11/2017 so it should see you out until you get a new laptop.

[mixture]

Vista....Any thoughts?

Yeah, Vista was a ghastly operating system with many issues, one in particular being it ate memory for breakfast.... very much a hog.

Go 7 or 8, don't waste your time with Vista.

[sherburn2LA]

go on I'll bite.

If you are just a casual user then carry on with XP. The sky is not going to fall in. If you want a standby plan then just put a lightweight Linux on a stick or dual boot and use that as an alternative.

[mixture]

go on I'll bite.

You'll bite at what exactly ? The opportunity to make a fool of yourself ?

If you are just a casual user then carry on with XP.

Seriously ?!?

Sorry, but I'm not going to feed trolls who are desperately trying to find reasons to cling onto XP when NONE exist. There is no debate to be had here. XP is DEAD. Every single bit of technical evidence is stacked up against the clinger-ons.

There is no such thing as a "casual user". Infact, I would humbly suggest based on much experience that the "casual users" are the ones who are at most risk !

[Booglebox]

Originally Posted by mixture

Yeah, Vista was a ghastly operating system with many issues, one in particular being it ate memory for breakfast.... very much a hog.

SP1 fixed that, and Vista actually remains better in terms of memory usage for machines with not a lot of memory.
The key thing is that computers with 7 were sold with at least 1gb of memory whereas when Vista came out, you could buy a single-core machine with 512mb, which had the Vista "it'll work" sticker on, despite the incredibly crap user experience, made worse by the pre-SP1 memory bugs you mention
That, plus low driver support for the NT6 branch, resulted in the poor impression that persists to this day.

[llondel]

[...]desperately trying to find reasons to cling onto XP when NONE exist.

I can think of one, which is why people are still using XP. The sheer hassle of installing something else and making sure all important stuff is copied across. If you've got a bunch of stuff installed then you have to go set up the new system, install stuff, swear a lot if suddenly your original install disks don't work on the new OS, etc. That level of upgrade is major pain, and until superseded by the pain of being hacked, is likely to be the limiting factor.

I finally got my son to ditch his XP system when I showed him that I had all his favourite applications running on Linux. The XP install is still there (the machine is dual-boot), but next time I upgrade his system it will lose that.

[mixture]

and making sure all important stuff is copied across

If people are lazy and can't be bothered to instigate a decent backup routine then that's not my problem.

[llondel]

I would venture to suggest that the concept of a backup is alien to the vast majority of people, at least until the first time they lose important data. I would further venture to suggest that even after such an event many of them still don't back up data.

When I do an upgrade I buy a new hard disk and install onto that, so I can copy important data over from the previous disk rather than overwrite any of it.

[sherburn2LA]

and the other big reason is that apart from the pain of the upgrade XP will run passably on a 1.5Ghz / 500Mb machine especially if you pull some of the start up crap and throttle back your AV settings which W7 will certainly not.

So if you understand and accept the risks and can handle the possible consequences sticking with XP is a perfectly rational decision. As llondel suggests even after they have lost data some people don't back up. Which suggests that many of them see it as an annoyance or inconvenience not a catastrophe.

[Mac the Knife]

The newest Linux Mint - Main Page - Linux Mint - is so slick that there are few excuses for staying with XP, particularly for ordinary users.

It's businesses that have to bite the bullet - so many will have to upgrade machines and rewrite clunky old in-house software that depends on XP's idiosyncrasies.

Windows 7 is fine if you can still find a copy - the big misery is the confusing/irritating Windows 8 interface that MS is likely to persist with.

Happily, individual users can install Classic Shell - http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell/ - but this isn't so easy in a corporate environment (and neither is Linux, unless you happen to have a very switched on business).

I suspect that Chrome OS (and to a lesser extent OS X) are the real future as cloud storage and W3C start to bite.

Mac

[TURIN]

Thank you all for the replies. I didn't expect to start WWIII though.

Linux looks promising. Thanks for the heads up.

One thing I will say. XP works, It is familiar and easy to use. That is why most of us really don't want to get rid. As I said, I have a HTPC running Vista. It works but I really struggle to do anything with it as it so unfamiliar. I don't touch it unless the Media Centre starts to play up (rarely).

[mad_jock]

For what you want to do just get linux.