It's always hard to say goodbye. I was excited when I first heard the news you were coming, even more when you came into this world October 25, 2001. I knew you 12 years. Wow, seems like a long time but it wasn't and now can never be forever. We were friends since your birth, and though you were not always my best friend, you were always there for me when I needed you the most. We would spend hours together, listening to music, helping me with my work, even showing me cool things to do on the internet. After 3 major surgeries and many other "fixes", maybe I should have known but when I heard you were being called home and were not long for this world, I wept. It wasn't fair. It isn't fair. That's why I decided to write this. Hoping that I could somehow make it easier for me and countless others. Hoping that somehow I could make a difference, and your name be remembered throughout time. Over your life, you accomplished many things I never imagined possible, so at least this goodbye is bittersweet because though you life was cut short, you fulfilled your purpose. As you leave us now, I light for you a flame, eternal. For you and those have gone before, thank you. Thank you for everything. Goodbye Windows XP, goodbye.

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Current: 1975 450SEL, 83 300D, 88 Yugo GVX, 90 300D OM603 swap, 91 F150 4.6 4v swap, 93 190E Sportline LE 3.0L M104 swap, 93 190E Sportline LE Megasquirt, 03 Sprinter, 06 E500 4Matic wagon.

^Nicely done!

and your kin . . SP1, SP2, SP3, Starter, Home, Professional, Media Center and Tablet Edition . . .

http://youtu.be/redTxFT-GLk

A news report yesterday stated that about 30% of all machines still use XP. The numbers are much higher at the businesses i support. I dunno if you can still get flash and java updates for xp, but they are more important than the Windoze stupid-minded security updates. Ah, mean, after all, why not just use a functional anti-virus package?!?!

I was a Product Marketing Manager for a software company that was in the "Independent Software Vendor" program with Microsoft. I went to the XP product roll out at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Steve Balmer(sp?) spoke and Paul Rodriquez the stand up comedian entertained.

They gave away Windows XP laptop Back Packs. Not long after that I made every city of a world wide Tech Tour rolling out our own new Major Release and carried that bag all over the Western world. I still have it albeit a bit worn out at this point.

Windows XP Professional was a pretty good platform for our product and had been a long time coming. NT itself had been a LONG time coming. The version 3.51 had finally gotten to a level of maturity where it would work most of the time without the blue screen of death. NT 4.0 used that engine and had a better front end. 2000 Professional was pretty stable, but XP Professional ran very reliably in the real time environment in which our HMI products operated.

Most of the releases have taken the same engine with some minor improvements and wrapped it in a different looking front end. Such upgrades didn't always bring much of anything new to the table, but they certainly made ol' Bill a lot of money.

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

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

So, now what?
Linux?

Mint?

Sugar?

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Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

Linux could never completely replace bill's stuff. The roots are just too deep.

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

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

They just replaced our work computers that ran XP with windows 7. Myself, I went to mac a couple years ago.

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1984 300SD Orient Red/ Palomino
1989 560SEC
2016 Mazda 6 6 speed manual
1995 Ford F-150 reg cab 4.9 5speed manual

BTW, Best Buy has a deal this week, $100 trade in credit for any running XP laptop towards a new Apple, Windows or Chromebook laptop. At the lowest cost, that would mean a 2GB/16GB SSD Celeron powered Chromebook for about $100.

XP isn't totally dead. It's somewhat undead as various countries have paid the extortionists at Microsoft to keep it running.

It's Zombie XP.

I haven't had an XP machine in probably almost a decade. Went to Vista when it came out now I have 7 or 8, not sure.

Peeps need to upgrade their old junk computers.

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2006 CL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2026 Genesis GV70
2007 Tiara 3200

Why? If it works and does the job, then what's the problem? Malware is typically acquired through user stupidity, not through an external attack on the OS.

I'm typing this on an XP Pro laptop... it still works fine and is running mostly non-MS software anyway (OpenOffice for editing, GIMP for image processing, Chromium and Firefox for web access, Thunderbird for email). If the HDD takes a dump, I'll probably reinstall with Win 7 Pro, but other than that it's not worth the time or effort. Certainly not going to Win 8/8.1 with its ***** interface and M$'s push for me to put my personal data in the "Cloud."

Backups happen to a Linux home server that in turn gets backed up to encrypted cloud storage regularly, so data loss is a non-issue.

I personally have Windows 8.1 Pro, was an early adopter of Windows 8 and I have had no regrets. Never had a problem with it, much more stable than XP, Vista, or 7. I actually had Vista Business on the computer I have 8.1 Pro on and overall it was more stable than any of the computers I had XP Pro on, except for a software compatibility error with Kaspersky anti-virus that caused it to crash all of the time, but was fixed by a Kaspersky update 3 months later. I must be the odd one out, or maybe the higher end versions of the systems are not as bad as the lower end ones.

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Current: 1975 450SEL, 83 300D, 88 Yugo GVX, 90 300D OM603 swap, 91 F150 4.6 4v swap, 93 190E Sportline LE 3.0L M104 swap, 93 190E Sportline LE Megasquirt, 03 Sprinter, 06 E500 4Matic wagon.

Meaning that you're trading in a multi-functional computing device for a dumb terminal with web access capability. The only good Chromebooks are those which have Ubuntu or similar installed.

Timeshare computing died for a reason. If I'm going to run a Google OS on a portable, it will be Android, which actually has a decent native app ecosystem, and isn't just a glorified web browser with a rudimentary file manager.

Stability isn't the issue (similar on Win 7 and Win 8.x). MS's procrustean push to ram a tablet interface down business users' gullets per force is the issue.

Having the "Start Menu" take up all of the real estate on a 24" screen is asinine. Having Metro(sexual) craplets take over the screen by default with no intuitive way to switch or quit is asinine. Granted, 8.1 is better than 8, and there are some 3rd party fixes for the worst misfeatures, but Win 8 is still a disaster.

I really don't give a damn about having "Live Tiles" in a start screen that I only look at briefly -- they'd be far more useful as desktop widgets unless I'm using a tablet.