XP's retirement will be hacker heaven

We're assuming that XP will still be useful for online access in a year. Hardware that can run the OS will be old, limited and web browsers will eventually be obsolete as new plugins and all that are made. Firefox is becoming a RAM and CPU hog. We're probably lucky there is still modern web browser support for the OS.

I use a second PC with XP to play older games, though I do go online with it if I need to download something direct to it as it's a hassle transferring files with a USB stick.

lehnerus2000 said:

sygnus21 said:

Putting finances aside, I personally can't see why anyone is still running XP. Pretty much anything you "need" XP for is way outdated by now. You also have the decreased performance due to memory limitations - not everyone has/had XP 64.

IMO, Windows Live Photo Gallery works better in XP, than W7 (and probably W8).

XP doesn't have Libraries, so it doesn't run amok.

I don't use Windows Live Photo Gallery so I can't comment there but XPs photo downloading wizard and photo viewer were much better than Win 7's. I use the photo viewer in Office 2010 instead. To download photos from my camera card, I download them directly to the destination folder, then mass rename them using IrfanView.

I haven't had any problems with libraries.

lehnerus2000 said:

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I don't use Windows Live Photo Gallery so I can't comment there but XPs photo downloading wizard and photo viewer were much better than Win 7's. I use the photo viewer in Office 2010 instead. To download photos from my camera card, I download them directly to the destination folder, then mass rename them using IrfanView.

I haven't had any problems with libraries.

Libraries are typical MS.
They are an OK idea, poorly implemented.

For me personally, Libraries offer no benefits over "Favorites", "Jump Lists", "Recent Places" or just navigating to the actual directory.

MS programs like WMP and WLPG automatically attempt to add EVERY Library folder into themselves and there is no way to stop them (WMC is the only exception).

The only way to prevent that from happening is to remove every folder from the Libraries, except for the one that you want to work on.

In XP you just add whatever folders you like into WLPG.
Since I only use it to tag items in one folder, it works much better in XP.

Admittedly, the only thing I use Libraries for are to duplicate the Start Menus links XP had that were replaced by the Library links in Win 7. For example, I just have the My Documents folder in the Documents Library so, to get to My Documents, I click on the Start Button, the Click on the Documents Library link. That essentially takes me directly to My Documents. Works like a charm.

I can see advantages to using Libraries as designed but, to do so, I would have had to rearrange massive amounts of the data I had already organized when it was on my XP machine before transferring it to my Win 7 machine and just didn't feel the time it would take to do so was justified (I'm too close to the grave already). When I start putting videos on my present machine, I will put each HDD that the videos will go onto into the Video library so I will have them all on one directory.

Well for quickly viewing photos I just use Windows Photo Viewer. For anything else I use either Adobe bridge, Photoshop, or Adobe Lightroom. Didn't mess with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

But yes there were some apps in XP that were better but are now gone, scaled back, and/or changed. The way Microsoft probably sees it most users are using other suitable apps anyway so why bother.

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

XP was great in it's day, but that day has passed. Time to move on.

My two cents.

sygnus21 said:

Well for quickly viewing photos I just use Windows Photo Viewer. For anything else I use either Adobe bridge, Photoshop, or Adobe Lightroom. Didn't mess with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

But yes there were some apps in XP that were better but are now gone, scaled back, and/or changed. The way Microsoft probably sees it most users are using other suitable apps anyway so why bother.

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

XP was great in it's day, but that day has passed. Time to move on.

My two cents.

I agree; time to move on. There were only two apps in XP that were degraded in Win 7 that affected me and I found ways to deal with that. It's definitely not worth trying to stay with an outdated OS (no matter how good it was) just because of two apps.

lehnerus2000 said:

sygnus21 said:

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

Create a VM and run a copy of it on Linux. :)

I run all of my old games on an XP VM, which means I can play them on W7 or Linux Mint.

Well for the average everyday user who can't spell VM, that's not an option, and thus doesn't solve the issue.

As for me, I've no reason to run XP. In fact, I haven't touched it since wiping it off my backup PC a year or so ago.

Again, the PC enthusiasts may find a use for it, but for the average Jane/Joe Blow, it's going to be more problematic than it's worth.

I have 64-bit Windows 7 which can't run 16-bit applications. That means I need another OS to run old games like the first Max Payne. DOSbox can bypass some limitations but not all. Furthermore I had some unexplainable physics bugs in shadow Man playing under 7, yet the game works fine in XP..

As for running in a virtual machine, this also gives me a second PC to go online with in case my 7 PC has issues.