Windows XP: Kill it, bin it, upgrade it

[Petey7]

What I originally wrote was way too long to be allowed.

I'll put it like this. With Windows XP, it took my computer over a minute to start up. With 7, I've clocked it at around 30 seconds, including the bios post. When its running, there is a similar speed increase with everything I run. The new start menu still seems weird to me and their are some options I no longer have, but guess what. Not being asked if I want to shut down, restart or go on stand-by when I the hit power-button, as opposed to it doing one of the three everytime I hit it, is not worth having a much slower computer.

 

[profdlp]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but a couple thoughts to consider:

1) Lots of small-to-medium sized business are in no rush to upgrade something which already works. Your typical office manager who is in charge of procurement is not going to be interested in features which they probably don't understand anyway and won't be too keen on having to learn how to support a new OS. I had to buy four Win7 licenses to upgrade my household (one netbook came with XP SP3 and will stay there until I get the urge to really learn Linux) and it cost me over $400 to make the switch. Multiply that expense by a factor of ten, then throw in having to support 40 end users who never had the chance to practice for Win7 with Vista and you'll understand why there are a lot of folks still clinging to XP. There is also a common trend in business to wait until the first Service Pack is out to make a switch - they want to make sure that any initial bugs have already been ironed out.

2) This point would be moot if Vista hadn't been such a dud. How many people would have gladly hung on to 98se a few extra years if XP had stunk? I skipped the whole Vista business on my personal machines because I felt that XP was a lot more hassle-free. I know that Vista improved over the years, but by the time it became a viable option for me Win7 was already on the horizon.

3) Can you imagine the howls if Microsoft did pull the plug now? They would be accused of trying to extort money from people who had bought and paid for a system which was pretty darn good. As many of those silly "M$" references as you see now you they would multiply rapidly as soon as that happened.

Personally, I would probably still be on XP myself if it weren't for the extended open free trial of Win7. I originally set up Win 7 to dual-boot with my existing XP and noticed after about two weeks that I never logged on to the XP OS anymore. How many folks weren't interested in being a guinea pig for a beta OS and are merely waiting a while longer to be sure that Win 7 really is as good as so many people (including myself) say it is?

I like Win 7 as much as any of you, but I'm not going to condemn someone else for being cautious. Remember, we heard nothing but "Vista Sucks" for the last few years. Some people are just going to take a little more convincing.

 

[Kari]

Tell me, how is pinning any different to Quick Launch? the only difference is they spread across your taskbar.

However, once launched, they still take up the same amount of room on the Taskbar, using Quick Launch they take up double the space, as it makes a new Icon when you launch it

Martin, at least using Taskbar as I use, on left & small icons & never combine, using QuickLaunch makes a lot of sense and difference. I would not survive without it.

Kari

 

[severedsolo]

I stand corrected Always happy to admit I'm wrong

 

[Kari]

Martin, what you say is certainly true using default Taskbar. For me, this having it left, no programs pinned & QuickLaunch works best.

An old Finnish saying: Some like the daughter, some prefer the mother. It fits into this context, too; the thing I like in Windows is how customizable it is.

Kari

 

[JonM33]

For some people no it is not...I use the quick launch every day and I would be pissed if they were to remove it...I did not even want to use 7 until I saw how to re-enable it

The new start menu is ok, but I HATE "pinning" items to the taskbar as for me it just takes up a lot more room then the quick launch dose and it dose not group every one together

The new taskbar is Quick Launch and the taskbar combined. Just pin your icons and group them as you want.

 

[dhanushka83]

Dont say like that...According to me Win Xp is better and Better OS...I know Win 7 is good. But the resources win 7 take is much more than XP...

 

[JonM33]

Dont say like that...According to me Win Xp is better and Better OS...I know Win 7 is good. But the resources win 7 take is much more than XP...

And Windows 98 requires even LESS resources than Windows XP. Does that make it better?

Windows XP - 233MHz Pentium, 64MB RAM, 1.5GB hard drive space
Windows 98 - 66MHz 486, 16MB RAM, 175MB hard drive space

 

[dhanushka83]

Ya windows 98 better than XP by resource..But it has less administrative functions can done..Example. 98 cant added to Domain,,,What are the functions that windows 7 has than XP, except bit locker and Vitalization

 

[Petey7]

dhanushka83 brought up a decent point. Many people, like my dad, refuse to get a new computer because they know one they have works, and some of these old computers don't have what it takes to run 7. My dad has a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 (not the HT version mind you) and 512M or 1G of DDR ram. He is currently running Windows XP and it runs pretty slow with that. I could put more ram in it and get a HT Pentium 4 off of ebay to make it have what it takes to run 7, but I'd probably have to turn off most of the fancier features. To be fare he did just buy a new laptop, but that was for my mom to use, so he still isn't getting rid of his old machine. I actually just got him to upgrade from IE6 to IE8, and the only reason he did was because one of his favorite websites no longer worked right in IE6. Yeah, he seems stubborn, but he knows what he has now allows him to do what he needs to do on a daily basis. He wouldn't know that when getting a new PC.

 

[Ryan2320]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but a couple thoughts to consider:

1) Lots of small-to-medium sized business are in no rush to upgrade something which already works. Your typical office manager who is in charge of procurement is not going to be interested in features which they probably don't understand anyway and won't be too keen on having to learn how to support a new OS. I had to buy four Win7 licenses to upgrade my household (one netbook came with XP SP3 and will stay there until I get the urge to really learn Linux) and it cost me over $400 to make the switch. Multiply that expense by a factor of ten, then throw in having to support 40 end users who never had the chance to practice for Win7 with Vista and you'll understand why there are a lot of folks still clinging to XP. There is also a common trend in business to wait until the first Service Pack is out to make a switch - they want to make sure that any initial bugs have already been ironed out.

(My opinion)

If business wait and sit and wait, they are wasting more money trying to keep XP alive and well, then they would by slowly moving to Windows 7

If your programs don't work on Windows 7 then it is time to put some fire under the developer.. or find cheaper or even better programs that will work for Windows 7.

I know in the end it all cost money, but the thing I don't get is that IT departments should have been aware that a new OS is arriving shortly, and they had time to test hardware and programs with Windows 7 beta before Windows 7 came out, and they can still do a 90 day trial of Windows 7 Enterprise. It's all free to try!!

 

[Petey7]

Ya windows 98 better than XP by resource..But it has less administrative functions can done..Example. 98 cant added to Domain,,,What are the functions that windows 7 has than XP, except bit locker and Vitalization

Now I feel bad for defending you. 7 has dozens of little features all over the place. The thing I notice the most is that it is designed with multi-core processors in mind, so when used on a pc made in the past 3 years its definitely faster. As for a specific feature, Windows DVD Maker, when the priority of the process is changed, is the best DVD burning program I've seen personally. It also is the only version of Windows that can use the newest version of WMP, which has an option that lets me stream music on my computer to another 7 pc on the same network. I can also get Windows Live Movie Maker which is several times better than the one in XP. I could go on for hours.

 

[JonM33]

Ya windows 98 better than XP by resource..But it has less administrative functions can done..Example. 98 cant added to Domain,,,What are the functions that windows 7 has than XP, except bit locker and Vitalization

Windows XP Home cannot connect to a domain. If that is a requirement, let's go back to Windows NT 4.0 then? It can join a domain.

Windows XP - 233MHz Pentium, 64MB RAM, 1.5GB hard drive space
Windows NT 4.0 - 25MHz 486, 12MB RAM, 124MB hard drive space

So with your logic, Windows NT 4.0 must be better than Windows XP because it requires less resources?

 

[dhanushka83]

Windows 7 Home also Cant added to Domain,,by name Home it Said not it for enterprise. I know Windows 7 is better, But need to transfer it to according to requirement. If u never used modern features of win 7 it's useless to move Win 7 by wasting resources

 

[dhanushka83]

Windows XP - 233MHz Pentium, 64MB RAM, 1.5GB hard drive space
Windows NT 4.0 - 25MHz 486, 12MB RAM, 124MB hard drive space

no dear, I said Select OS according to requirement. Otherwise wasting resource

 

[JonM33]

Windows 7 Home also Cant added to Domain,,by name Home it Said not it for enterprise. I know Windows 7 is better, But need to transfer it to according to requirement. If u never used modern features of win 7 it's useless to move Win 7 by wasting resources

Oh, I use all the modern features of Windows 7.

To me, a resource is wasted if it isn't used. If I put 4GB RAM in my system and Windows XP isn't using it then Windows XP is wasting resources.

Windows XP - 233MHz Pentium, 64MB RAM, 1.5GB hard drive space
Windows NT 4.0 - 25MHz 486, 12MB RAM, 124MB hard drive space

no dear, I said Select OS according to requirement. Otherwise wasting resource

You said that Windows XP is better and that Windows 7 uses more resources. My point is that if THAT is your argument for why Windows XP is better than Windows NT 4.0 must be the superior of all of them, right? I mean Windows XP is bloatware next to Windows NT 4.0.

 

[dhanushka83]

To me, a resource is wasted if it isn't used. If I put 4GB RAM in my system and Windows XP isn't using it then Windows XP is wasting resources.

ha.. U no need to upgrade RAM to 4GB when u installed XP.......

 

[JonM33]

To me, a resource is wasted if it isn't used. If I put 4GB RAM in my system and Windows XP isn't using it then Windows XP is wasting resources.

ha.. U no need to upgrade RAM to 4GB when u installed XP.......

I am a gamer and I run a lot of VMs for testing. Yes, I need 4GB RAM.

 

[bigseb]

As good as Windows 7 is I won't use it. Why: My XP works just fine and has an incredibly small footprint. Plus some of my older software doesn't seem to function on Windows 7 (some not all, some only with patches).

I played around with the RC when it was released but honestly its just too resource hungry for what you get out of it, which mainly eye-candy.

As a Linux user I admittedly may be just a little spoilt too. Plenty eye-candy, stable, no viruses and a ton of software.

 

[dhanushka83]

When u played games in Windows XP and Windows 7 with 4 GB RAM what is the best and What can u get real performance ? Honestly tell me