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

[commodorejohn]

In fact, I've been thinking about what will happen when / if I actually need to upgrade my hardware.  I'd like to find a more modern system that will STILL run Windows XP - mainly for the sole attraction of the additional CPU cores that will make my existing video editing software etc. even faster.

You have to check into the hardware and make sure there are drivers available, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how much newer hardware still does support XP. Enough that I can probably keep going for the foreseeable future on refurbished laptops, anyway.

I'm still running XP on both my daily-driver laptop and my gaming PC - never touched Vista, and 7 has too much needless screwing around with UI stuff, only some of which can be fixed with third-party patches. XP runs all my software and lets me use the interface I'm familiar with from over fifteen years of running Win95 derivatives instead of forcing me into the New Way of doing things; why would I upgrade?

(I'm curious, though, I've heard that you can take the explorer.exe from XP and run it on 32-bit 7 - if that works, I might give it a shot. But at the moment I don't have a free machine to experiment with...)

[commodorejohn]

What games do you play on your gaming pc?
What specs are your gaming pc?
Are you using 32 or 64 bits windows xp?

32-bit XP, on a P4-2.8GHz (Prescott something-or-other) with 4GB DDR400 (just under 3GB recognized, but with all four it means I get dual-channel memory access) and a GeForce 7600 GT (8x AGP.) Aside from an attempt at Skyrim (the CPU and GPU aren't really up to it,) the newest thing I play on it is Oblivion. (I'm working on a heavily modded-up Morrowind install, though, I'm curious to see whether that will end up being more of a workout for the system...)

I'm looking at boosting it to a Core 2 board in the near future; I've already got a PCIe GeForce 8400 something-or-other to go with it.

[commodorejohn]

Nice to see another Elder Scrolls player

Mostly Morrowind, really. There's a lot I like about Oblivion - much better combat mechanics, f'rinstance, and technically gorgeous visuals - but it just really hasn't aged well. Too many elements dumbed-down, and some changes that were intended to make things better just made them worse. (Particularly the way the magic system replaces gradually lessened spell-failure chances with arbitrary "milestone" skill levels where you're allowed to cast better stuff, making all the skill levels in between feel pointless, and the leveled-difficulty system, which is clearly intended to keep you challenged but ends up making you feel increasingly frustrated as the difficulty rapidly outpaces your character development to the point where you have to pour like two dozen arrows into a single random bandit!) Plus, it just doesn't feel like as much of a world so much as just a generic fantasy playset, as compared to Morrowind's frankly alien landscape - partly because, like a lot of fantasy works, it looks pretty much like France, and partly because having fully-voiced dialogue means there's a lot less of it to flesh things out, because every line costs money :/

I'm told Skyrim is an improvement on most of those fronts, at least, but I never got out of the tutorial dungeon on account of my system's inability to handle it. Hopefully it'll have more of what I liked in Morrowind than Oblivion did...

But since your going PCI-E youll be better off You could pick up an Radeon 4870 or nvidia 260GTX for a really good price (Ive payed around 25-30$ for each) and with any dual core socket 775 CPU and that card you can run nearly all the latest games in low settings at least (Tried an E6300 overclocked @ 2,2GHz with an 260 GTX and it run both Skyrim and Borderlands in mid settings) under Windows XP.

Yeah...I don't mind AGP, really, but it's much harder to track down a Socket 775 board with AGP than it is to just go PCIe, and anyway I got the card on the cheap at the recycle center so it's no big deal. Just gotta get around to getting a board + CPU combo and then I can cannibalize the RAM and extra disk storage from my current Core 2 box (non-gaming, as it only has the one PCI slot! Stupid little micro-ATX boards...at least it was cheap.)

[commodorejohn]

when M$ stops supporting winXP, it wont become automatically open to all viruses. some people probably still use win2000, win95 and even older systems, those are probably as secure as win7. you will still be able to run thirdparty firewall and updated antivirus and other apps.

I've had exactly three virus infections in the fifteen years I've been using PCs, and all of them were on Windows versions which were still well inside their support window. It's all about good judgement and reasonable precautions on any system that faces the Internet, and third-party software can go a long way towards covering any holes that the OS vendor doesn't.

[commodorejohn]

Why don't you just unplug your modem or router when you are not using it?  That's what I do.  It gets unplugged every evening before I go to bed and usually doesn't get plugged in again until I get home from work the next day and need to check the internet.

Hackers can't break into your computer if there is no connection to the outside world.

Shaves a few cents on your electricity bill as well (every little bit counts).

More simply, you can just disconnect from Windows (assuming you don't just go the even simpler route and shut the computer down when you're not using it. Suspend would work, too, assuming you don't have wake-on-LAN enabled, which you really shouldn't.) No cable-monkeying required.

[commodorejohn]

Seriously, WHY Windows? Don't be so cruel with yourself.

Why Windows? Maybe because it doesn't make me want to slit my wrists with dependency hell and terrible UI...