Completely off topic...but is Windows XP dead?

[psxphill]

I mean I love Windows 7. Windows 7 is an awesome operating system and I hate Windows 8 with the greatest of passion, but Windows XP is a great Windows OS too and wondering if it is really dead now?

Windows 8 is great and I don't miss the start menu at all now, I tried various methods of resurrecting it during the beta days but after installing the release candidates and then RTM I just stopped bothering with it. Anything new takes a while to get used to, I remember people complaining about the start menu in 1995.
 
XP might not be dead, but I haven't used it in 6 years. The number of users is decreasing, but at what point do you class an operating system as dead? Office 2013 is not supported on XP, I'm sure a lot of companies who still release software for it will stop soon as well.

[psxphill]

On somewhat new hardware XP is outdated yes, but if you are using older more performance limited hardware XP is more fitting then 7/8 (also much old hardware do not get drivers for new OS versions anymore).

I upgraded my 4 year old netbook from XP to 7 and now 8. I wouldn't put XP back on it. It's a 1.66mhz atom with 2gb of ram. I might drop to XP for something slower, but I might also put windows 2000 on it.

[psxphill]

That is why Windows 7 is like Windows XP in steroid and I am happy to go for Windows 7 easy.

Windows 8 is Windows 7 on steroids. I never use the start screen and I don't miss the start menu. Other than that it's just better, but you're free to do what you want.
 

That's only for crap they sell at places like Best Buy. Dell's business line is still entirely available with Windows 7. Even they're not so stupid as to shoot themselves in the foot that badly!

That isn't because people wouldn't like windows 8 though, that is because businesses have to buy machines that will run the software that keeps their business going. Keeping buggy custom applications working on new versions of an operating system can be tricky, that problem is not just limited to Windows. They might have worked on the previous version of the OS even though they weren't doing things right and any change could affect them. There were even bug fixes in Kickstart 2.04 that affected buggy 1.3 apps.

[psxphill]

You can slipstream SP3 into XP on a bootable CD. You've had to do that for a lot of motherboards since 2009 as they only Support XP SP3.
 
http://www.pcmech.com/article/slipstream-sp3-into-a-windows-xp-install-cd/

Yeah, I would always slip stream the service pack and do a fresh install anyway as it uses less disk space.

[psxphill]

Well, isn't Microsoft stealing from people too? I mean when you buy a product what gives the company right to come to your home, disable your product so that you are forced to buy the newer model?

They don't do that. If you have an old computer running XP today then it will still work in the future. Although it is the first OS that had to be activated online, so it will be interesting what they do about allowing new installs.
 
They might do what Adobe recently did with Creative Suite 2 and put out a new version that no longer requires activation.
 
Providing security updates is another matter.
 

I never upgrade the OS on an old machine. I get a new machine designed for the new OS. I can't give up Xp because I need it to run my very expensive printer and scanner combo that isn't supported beyond Xp. This qualifies as a business use. I will be running print jobs with Xp long after 2014 barring natural disasters destroying everything I've got.

My five year old laptop came with Vista, I upgraded to 7 and now 8 & it runs fine. Old hardware can be a problem, as long as your hardware came with a vista 32 & 64 bit driver then it's likely to be supported by 7 & 8. But hardware from XP or earlier can be a problem, I used XP mode for testing some old hardware before selling it. Driver support in Linux or MacOS is worse though.

[psxphill]

And for the laptop that I use for business which involves a lot of writing, email, printing and scanning, I'm really cautious and conservative and don't install new software very often, much less a new OS.

I tend to buy a new hard drive when doing upgrades for that reason. Then you can install all the software you need but switch back to do some real work.
 
Usually I'm ready for a new drive by the time the new OS comes out anyway.
 
I would like new hardware, because this laptop is now quite low powered. It's a 2.5 C2D with an NVidia 8600. In Windows 8 it scores 6.2 for processor and ram, 5.9 for the 1tb WDC drive, with the lowest score of 5.5/5.6 for the graphics/gaming graphics.
 
I tend to always install the latest of everything, although I've never looked at OS3.5/OS3.9.