Still on Windows XP? Here’s Some Bad Advice

whs · 01 Apr 2014

You guys are inspiring. I was not so lucky to run virtual systems with VMware Player on my Mint from a 16GB stick. It ran but it was like molasses. The virtual systems are on an external eSata attached 240GB SSD. I have several flavors of Mint, Zorin and Windows 8,1. Running them from my Windows 7 host is no problem. Performance is like a native installation, But from the stick it was too slow.

I am perfecting my 120GB stick now. It has Linux Mint Mate and a data partition on it. I am working on a tutorial to explain this setup. Here is a beta version of the tutorial which is still missing a couple of videos and some fine tuning.

TanyaC · 01 Apr 2014

andrew129260 said:

TanyaC said:

HerrKaLeun said:

TanyaC: I guess I'm not sure how you deal with the Excel spreadsheets you use? Do you dualboot to a Windows installation when you need to use Excel?

Yes, I dual Boot. They are fairly complex.

Why not just use Wine? Emulates windows software almost perfectly, including office. Why bother with dual booting?

True, but I'd already set my system up for dual boot when I first installed Mint because I wasn't sure if I was going to stay with it. Pure laziness that's all. When I get some time I will give Wine a try.

The spreadsheets are quite complex. They have to be set to manual calculate because of the time it takes to re-calculate. Hopefully performance will be just as good under Wine.

jimbo45 · 01 Apr 2014

Hi there
If you are using a USB stick then you really need a 32GB USB3 stick plugged into a USB3 port -- the difference ibetween running a USB2 stick and USB3 stick makes using one a real pain only to be used in an emergency whereas on a USB3 port it's quite usable.

The best solution of course is to use an SSD -- I was lucky as I had two older 120 SSD's which I'd replaced by 250 GB ones in two laptops - so these were "spare". I now use these as the portable systems and they are fine.

Just being doing final updates of an Eng. and an Isl version of XP before the shutdown in a few days -- although all updates until the shutdown for XP WILL still be available for an unspecified time in the future.

Note also if you use MSE as your XP security package updates will CONTINUE to be provided until May 2015 so you've still got a lot of time left -- Ms kept that one fairly quiet " !!.

@Tanya -EXCEL on Wine - particularly 2010 is rather "iffy" -- it's much easier to use a VM in UNITY mode and simply have a link to EXCEL on your Linux desktop.

Depending on your Linux distro there's several script around for adding the Icon and link to the HOST desktop.

Cheers
jimbo

bawldiggle · 01 Apr 2014

jimbo45 said:

Quite liked the videos but for Tutorials I still think it's easier - especially for "First time" or "Noobie" Linux users to have a "Static" presentation such as a Powerpoint session or even a PDF / HTML / Word doc with pictures.

The problem with Videos and You Tube is that you are forced to go over at the Tutors rate -- with a document (whether on the screen or a printed doc) you can go at your own pace, make notes and easily re-review stuff you might have missed / not understood first time round.

Agreed!
I try to save web pages and even long winded TXT files as PDF. Then add my own bookmarks in the PDF.
PDF allows me to add comments without destroying the original and bookmarks give me instant access to the "bits" I need to review several times.

I use mozilla addon "Print pages to PDF" to save web pages (and emails) and Free "PDF-Xchange" to bookmark and comment out the PDF document.
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Two of my AutoCad rigs are standalone XP. No internet connection ever! 11-years and 9-years old.
Neither PC has missed a beat in all those years, the older PC has had a hard life working 15+ hours per day.
For online I am glad I have Win7 ... but recently whs has swayed me over to "Mint Mate"
Experimenting!
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HerrKaLeun · 01 Apr 2014

Maybe I'm missing something... but to use Windows in VM you still need a legit license, right? So where is the savings?
And when you say Linux is compatible to Excel files, do you mean you can open and work on an Excel file inc. macros that a company sends you?
And for the applications you have in VM, can you copy&paste between VM and Linux?
As long as you have one single Windows Application it seems more a waste of time than a benefit. No offense if that is your hobby, to each his own. I really wonder what type of jobs you guys have. I can't imagine being at work switching between OS for each application. I work with multiple entities and all use Office.
And what IT department wants to deal with users that hangle between 2 OS? They have enough trouble with us all having one OS and Office with all its associated issues... but throw in Linux and tech people to use VM..... I guess show me one single large company that is succesful with that and I would consider the option. It just doesn't seem to exist outside this Forum

whs · 01 Apr 2014

Maybe I'm missing something... but to use Windows in VM you still need a legit license, right? So where is the savings?

When you run e.g. 8.1 in virtual, the virtual system becomes the home. With that virtual system you can go to any PC and run it without problems. So single license but multiple PCs - and completely legal.

There were reports on Cnet that companies run XP now under Linux/VM because they think that protects them from malware. Some clever salesman must have sold them that solution - probably for a lot of money. What they don't know is that this does not protect them at all. As soon as they go on the internet with their virtual XP they are as much exposed as they were with a natively installed XP.

Running a version of Linux for the internet is a completely different story. There you are a LOT less exposed to malware than with Windows.

This post was made with Linux on a stick.

HerrKaLeun · 01 Apr 2014

[QUOTE=whs;2737379When you run e.g. 8.1 in virtual, the virtual system becomes the home. With that virtual system you can go to any PC and run it without problems. So single license but multiple PCs - and completely legal.

[/QUOTE]

so a company has 100 employees and 100 PCs.. how do they not still need 100 windows licenses unless they share the stick with the virtual system?

whs · 01 Apr 2014

We are not talking about companies. They can afford 100 licenses. We are talking about home users that don't want to make an investment into e.g. Windows 8.

Or about somebody like me who has homes in 3 different locations and carries his virtual systems on a SSD. No need to keep all those operating systems (6) updated 3 times - including all the user files.

HerrKaLeun · 01 Apr 2014

whs said:

We are not talking about companies. They can afford 100 licenses. We are talking about home users that don't want to make an investment into e.g. Windows 8.

Or about somebody like me who has homes in 3 different locations and carries his virtual systems on a SSD. No need to keep all those operating systems (6) updated 3 times - including all the user files.

I'm not sure this discussion covers normal home users... those have one desktop and a tablets etc.
that original articles was advice for people that just have a PC at home and probably barely know how to turn it on. Someone like you who knows much about PCs wasn't really the target audience of that article.

I agree with your use VM may make sense... but this rarely is applicable to normal home users. someone else talked about 11 PCs at home... this clearly is not a topic for people that just use the PC to do stuff, this is a topic for people who use the PC for the sake of doing so :)

whs · 01 Apr 2014

Agree, these are fun projects for people who like to discover new things. And sometimes (like in my case) they are useful. But as you say, 90% of PC users struggle finding the start key and would get glazy eyes if you presented projects like that.

I was an instructor at the local computer club (800 members) for several years. I finally gave up because people that had used PCs for 20 years knew nothing - even not the basics. All they were able to do was to click on the 5 icons on their desktop. It was too frustrating to deal with those guys. Every time I was talking about some system function they yelled 'advanced, advanced' as if that was a disease.