winuae woes....

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Don't. XP SP3 is for nobs in suits who have no clue. No software of note requires it, including WinUAE.

You do realize anything prior to SP3 is no longer supported, therefore leaving gaping holes in your security with the older service packs?

Never heard a more foolish comment in my life, to recommend running a less secure operating system version - even if it is a MS product, and all.

[Duce]

XP is still a completely viable OS, and as others stated, especially for older HW and in cases where it's simply not worth the $ to invest in W7.  Just be aware support ends on it in 2014 (XP SP3) - SP support on SP1 and SP2 ended in 2006.

Honestly though, even on older machines that are of the XP era, I find Windows 7 to run on said hardware just as well as XP does, but you'll occasionally hit driver availability issues.  I'm having that problem atm trying to find W7/WHS 2011 RAID drivers for a 680i (Asus P5N32 E SLI Plus) based board.  XP drivers are readily available, but Win 7/WHS 2011 ones aren't.

As for AF, I think it delivers a good initial, easy to use experience - many people get back into the Amiga scene via Amiga Forever, but personally I have outgrown the encrypted ROM's and instability issues with it and just headed to standalone UAE or Amithlon.

I would not buy AF again myself, but I would not hesitate to recommend it to someone that just wants an emulated blast from the past in an all in one package.

[Duce]

For the fellow that is running an old XP install on the machine stuck in a garage with no networking, you can always download the service packs from MS and dump them on a USB stick, portable drive or optical media and upgrade that way.  SP's have always been available for standalone download for people like me that do networked/enterprise bulk/batch updating, people that generally find Windows Update abhorrent, lol.  Also very handy for fresh installs via nLite installations, you can simply add all SP's to an original, older OS disk to skip the Win Update gibberish.  SP3 is such a better experience, it just boggles my mind why people would put off patching up to it.

As for Amiga Forever, I tried the latest version earlier today and I was quite pleasantly surprised at how nice it was.  Most, if not all of my previous complaints with the circa AF 2009 version I purchased way back when have been cleaned right up and I suffered none of the problems I have in the past.
Was completely a treat to use, and I've never been shy about listing my gripes about the earlier versions.