My XP machines run great. With touchscreens no less.

Even got an old toughbook still running 98.....

Win 7 seems pretty cool, it's my new standard, and at this point, I see no reason to jump on Win 8

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On some nights I still believe that a car with the fuel gauge on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. - HST

1983 300SD - 305000
1984 Toyota Landcruiser - 190000
1994 GMC Jimmy - 203000

https://media.giphy.com/media/X3nnss8PAj5aU/giphy.gif

I still have an XP laptop (as well as an OS X laptop running Win 7 in VirtualBox). The XP laptop hasn't BSOD'ed in years. Literally.

For basic office stuff, an XP PC works just fine. Use 'em till they drop and need replacement, then swap them out. Keep in mind that until 2009, XP was the best Windows OS available (Vista was pretty awful). Plenty of companies keep computers for 5-6 years, yet it doesn't make sense to spend the money upgrading OS on older devices.

Support is typically in-house and/or outsourced as it is. Larger companies tend to use a lot of custom or modified software that's supported by in-house staff. Open-source doesn't mean there wouldn't be curated distributions so people obtaining them would know what they're getting.

Since my office migrated to W7 I haven't had a system failure. Used to have those 1-2 times per month with XP. Been running W7 for about 6 mos or so.

It seems to load a little faster. Because I am able to address huge RAM I upgraded to 24 G making GIS analysis screaming fast. I like it a lot.

But I'd rather have a Mac.

DEC was doing crazy stuff with VAX workstations and VMS, clustering them together for compiling and running other jobs, way back in the 80's.

Larry, I've got some old core memory that needs repairing, tell me your address so I can send it to you.

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'99 E300 Turbodiesel, '82 300TD, 1996 12V Cummins Turbo, '94 Neoplan - Detroit 6V92TA

Did any of your old application software fail to run on Win 7? Can you use old versions of Outlook and Office without any issues?

I've seen Office 2003 running on W7. Not sure why you'd want to go older than that.

I have Outlook and Office 2007. Hopefully they'll run when I have to make the switch.

Definitely.

I'm gonna give W8 a test in VMware Player for a while, it surely isn't getting the applaud that W7 got a few years back. Remains strange why MS designed their new flagship product for touch panel/tablet applications: would think that keyboard interfacing systems are their biggest market.

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2011 Prius

I think for W8 to successful in the business world they will have to get some type of option that removes the Metro UI. Not that the Metro UI is bad or anything. I think its pretty slick. I've used it on a tablet (bare min system requirements) and its nice and smooth. I think the bulk of users are accustomed to the standard desktop interface. Retraining people to use Metro as default will take time and money and companies will be less inclined to do so. Perhaps in W9 there will be such an option.

I also have to laugh a bit. We're the same bunch driving 20 year old cars, refusing to upgrade for the same reasons that have been said for XP->7->8.

I've got a project in the pipeline here for a friend of mine that involves some software dev with the MetroUI as the target interface and, as I follow it, the only way to develop a Metro application is to install Windows 8. So sometime in the near future my one machine at home will become a Windows 8 machine.

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82 300SD 145k
89 420SEL 210k
89 560SEL 118k
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The "blue screen of death" was common in NT and even Windows 2000. Even with all the wringing out of beta code on very early XP versions we did, I can't remember getting the blue screen of death, although it might have happened once or twice. XP is where it seemed to come together in the NT type world.

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

Agree.

Only NT could make me like XP. Only 3.1 could make me appreciate the elegance of NT.

Bingo bingissimo, there you've almost described the Microsoft business model: a company that makes money off individuals by constantly getting them to upgrade for no good reason.

Windows has been a consumer financed turd polishing exercise from the get go, enabled by Microsoft's monopoly allowed by the government except for when the latter pretended to sue MS for antitrust violations during that phony show trial episode. The Europeans have caught on to Gates' games and are slapping him with real fines in the billions and migrating their government IT off of Bill's bamboozle bonanza.

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'83 SD, 2x '85 SD
You are entitled to your own opinions, you are not entitled to your own facts.