I was one of the few people who actually liked Windows Me, and I bought a copy in 2000. I stayed with it until 2008 when I got a new computer and then bought an XP OEM at Fry's in Seattle, WA. Last month (feb/2014) I had a virus and I never made a boot disc which was stupid. So, I reinstalled XP OEM for the 5th time in 6 years. Guess what? It would not register, and I could not update SP3. I couldn't use IE8. So, for the first time I called MS. I talked to a girl in the Philippines, and she said that since this was my 5th time to reinstall XP, I had reached the limit of how many times I could do that with my OEM Disk. She said I could pay $40 to get a new key code and register XP. At first I agreed, but then she said I would have to have a MS email account to get the new code. I politely said "forget it". Now, I'm kind of glad I did. So, there is a lesson boys and girls. The amount of times you can reinstall an OEM copy doesn't seem to be unlimited. Or, was MS just trying to get me to upgrade to windows 7? I may never know.
I plan to keep Windows 7 as long as I possibly can. I hate to upgrade. I liked windows XP. So, I only upgrade operating systems about once every 8 years.
XP vs. Windows 7:
1.Windows 7 somehow automatically adjusted my GeForce 8400 GS video card so that the text and colors and brightness are better than what I had going with XP using Clear Type.
2. Programs load very fast, but 7 actually seems to be just a little slower when finding folders. When I click on my pictures files it takes sometimes 2 or 3 seconds to get a folder to come up. With XP, it was almost instantly.
3. System Restore on XP just gave you a list of dates and at least one/day. 7 now wants MS to suggest what the restore date should be. Stupid, XP way was better. MS always trying to make dummies out of the public. Also making a restore point isn't in the same place as System Restore anymore--also dumb IMHO.
4. In my pictures file (I'm kind of an amateur photographer) with XP, I could drag and drop pictures very fast to arrange them in groups or delete them, etc. With 7, this convenience has been lost. Now all pictures have to highlighted and then right click for operations. VERY STUPID IMHO. This is the one thing about Windows 7 I don't like at all.
5. The backup/restore and system repair disc on Windows 7 seems to be great. I didn't see this built in function on XP, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough for it. I'm ready for battle now. I plan to never reinstall Windows 7 again on my computer. It is just way too much work. I've got Hiren's Boot CD now and Kaspersky Rescue Disk and of course I made the Windows 7 repair disk. It was very easy to make using the "Maintenance" section.
6. It is harder to create icons to drop in the taskbar with Windows 7. Thanks to this forum I found the instructions on how do it, but I couldn't do it off the top of my head. OTOH, IE11 (Windows 7) has a function where we can just drag the icon in the web address for a quick launch button for our favorite web sites. I like that a lot.
My approach is no longer to just reinstall XP and all my documents and pictures if I have a problem. Windows 7 is a 3-day project to setup for me. I have the boot disk, I've done the image backups, and I even have a 3rd HD that I'm going to use if I ever have the C drive fail. I'm also going to do the backup image on a 64GB thumb drive.
Well, that's enough for now I guess. Short answer, at least 8 years hopefully.
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