How many folks still use XP?

[spark]

I telecommute and my work laptop has Windows 7.

[gah!ghost]

I think most tech departments would be happy if everyone would just leave their computer turned off in a locked office and never even look at it.

[Zander]

I'm not a system security expert by any means but from what I understand in my working with computers the main reason why you should not be running XP at this point is security. It's no longer supported or updated and the longer that is the case the more insecure it is.

[rusty pins]

XP here on my home computer too.

[oliver d]

still use xp on my my one home computer only because theres a DVR card installed on it and it runs on XP my other computers all run win 7

[dl_ashlee]

The biggest problem I find when an old computer starts running slow is that they have newer applications or these days web apps that require higher specifications.

[Diaper Mike 05]

I don't understand the hate for Windows 8.

[Repaid1]

If there's something wrong with XP, then I never found it The unvarnished and unbiased truth is that when someone wants you to upgrade your OS constantly, it's not because you have any need for that, it's because they simply want more of your money

[DiaperPony]

When did I stop using XP? I never started!

Windows XP was the OS that drove me to Linux and I've never looked back! I started on MS-DOS 3.30, and got very used to a lot of the dos programs over the years. Things were fine through the 9x era. However, with XP they had a big campaign "dos is dead!". Truth was, you could still run dos programs, however it was basically now inside an emulated virtual machine that was slow and never worked quite right. Plus they changed the syntax and look of commands I'd grown accustomed to for many years.

So I was faced with a choice: Do I relearn the XP equivalent programs for the stuff I had in dos, or abandon ship completely and learn something new that is open source, free, is rooted in ancient systems (so isn't likely to change much), has a nerd and hacker community lovingly supporting it, and isn't requiring phone calls to Microsoft over some piracy worry?

I actually had to stick with 98se for a little while, because at the time, there was a lot of missing driver support and fragile guis and such. However, Ubuntu Warty changed all that. The kernel was good, and the Gnome gui was too. I still had to relearn, but I knew there was a future in what I was learning. I've since found that the things I missed in dos were stone age compared to the power of the system I currently use. There are free versions of almost any program I can want, and they often have extra features and work better than the mainstream versions. I laugh when people are saving up money to buy some windows program, when I already have something more powerful, for free, that I can tweak at will.

Thanks Microsoft for losing this customer, you did me a huge favor!

[gah!ghost]

Or really anything Unix/Linux based from what I understand.

[lilJester]

i am running xp and have uhmmmmmm no issues?

[Pm88]

I see XP on a lot of business computers because they don't want to upgrade their proprietary software that still runs on it.

I know this all to well. However I'm stuck with Vista.

The company I work for has its own servers based in Denmark, so whenever I have to log into anything it first has to check in with Denmark and then I can continue working. It's slow to say the least.

[lilme`]

I find it hard to believe that Win7 doesn't run faster than XP especially if I know what system your using Now if your talking internet, than that may be depending on signal strength. As a particular system might have a weak rcv'r in the WiFi department which is slowing things down. But as far as clicking within the operating system from point to point or opening programs I think you will find it's blazing fast as compared to XP. Give it a 4 or 5 bar signal and internet will pop on screen before you can release the key! Anyway I recently upgraded my system (DUH!) and it came with Win8. I was just going to roll it back to 7 and go from there. Well it seems it isn't possible as for whatever reason they made the bios the latest greatest proprietary something or other. So Win7 drivers don't work right for some of the Hardware within the computer. So I bought a $5 program that flips my computer back to Win7 (look) functionality. that way I can toggle my desktop to Win8 to learn it, but normally it looks just like 7 that I am used to. So anyway... they make the same for Win7 back to XP in freeware:

[Repaid1]

Same here. I run win7 and my software is blazing fast, internet is blazing fast, bootup is fastest I've ever seen in a computer.

I hear ya, but I don't know if it's my computer, software or the combination of both. If I put my computer in Hibernation, it shuts down everything but power to the main mem. Which it stores it's last state. It can stay like that on a full battery for over 7 days. When I turn it on by the power switch it takes 3 seconds to full recovery. IF I power it totally down, it boots up to full in 12 seconds. Gotta love SSD drives

[Bettypooh]

To repaid and others: Yes, the one with W7 is slower to load the OS, stutters when listening to youtube music vids, and switches between programs more slowly too. In that I don't yet understand W7 I can't address these issues with risking it all crashing so I'm not going there yet And I still need to have the time to learn W7 better. The old XP clunker that outruns the newer one has been tweaked by me to not run anything except what I want running I cleaned up the auto-start items so that they don't hog any resources until they are needed. I cleared out all the retained crap from older versions of vendor-apps like flashplayer and java. Everything is on 'update notify only', no auto-installs, so that I do get the updates but they don't slow me down when I don't want them to. They can run when I go to sleep- I don't care what's happening then I have cleaned out or deleted every unnecessary file and folder that is not required to do what I do on my comps.

[anned]

I'm stuck with XP on my main computer that i use because i built it in 2000 and it will not even support Vista. (all my data is on it).

[froggy]

I use xp at home and windows 7 at work.

[lilme`]

Well, after a lot of swearing, patience, and determination, her computer is almost ready lol. I've worked on many computers in my time but hers... just wow.

[redneck diaper boy]

I work on computers on the side. Anything from physical cleanings to upgrades to software/OS maintenance.

[Bettypooh]

Yeah, the biggest problems are often user-created when they don't look really deep at what they are doing and what it's going to do to them. I always do 'custom' installs because if you load anything you don't need it just slows things down or eats memory Computers are like race cars- the less crap you've loaded the faster they will go and the better they will handle

[BabyChris121675]

I still use XP on my netbook but my new laptop I got for Christmas last year runs on Win8 which I had ZERO problems with because I can easily adapt to operating systems.

[dl_ashlee]

Worst choice ever was trying to make Win8 a tablet friendly OS.

[DavidMW]

I though the worst choice w.r.t. Win8 was trying to make it desktop friendly.

[lilme`]

Mobile's the future for most users

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Here's one for you. Acer is coming or has come out with an Android desktop

I like the "Convertible" that can be used as either a tab or laptop and am looking forward to upgrading in 2017 to one. I can do what I am doing now. I have my old Lenovo on my network and use it. If that lives until 2017, I'll have two on my network, plus my Grace Digital radio tuner and my tablet. The only problem I have with the Acer Iconoa a700 is that it is 1920 x 1200 and text is tiny and the screen res is unalterable/ What I hope to be able to do is run my two computers from a distance wirelessly from either the tab or, if I get it, the convertible

The tablet is the embodiment of science fiction stories where spacemen cared around a calculator, a "tablet and stylus" for writing and had vido communication aboard ship and a portable walki-talkie. the only thing different is that this is all one piece of equipment. AND I do not even need to write with it (although I would like digital pen capabillty for drawing) because you can record AND shoot photos/video. My own piece of the thirtieth century!. I can handle the Android Keyboard and some persons hande it like they were born to it