Support For Windows XP & Office 2003 Ends April 8th, 2014!

[Muilisx]

Here's another alternative for Windows XP EOL. It may take some tinkering and getting used to how it works, but it is another option.

ReactOS Project



***EDIT***
Well, after further research into ReactOS, it is not ready for most users, unless they are willing to put in the time & effort with it.
So disregard this as an alternative at this time!

That .ISO is 75.5MB. That's one small OS

I went ahead and downloaded it as I have a old computer that has Linux on it that I'm not using which one day I'll get bored, and burn this .iso to a cd, and boot from disc and see what this ReactOS is all about.

 

[saptech]

That .ISO is 75.5MB. That's one small OS

I went ahead and downloaded it as I have a old computer that has Linux on it that I'm not using which one day I'll get bored, and burn this .iso to a cd, and boot from disc and see what this ReactOS is all about.

I think I'll give it a shot also. I have an older box I'll put it on by itself. And like you, I'll get around to it one day!

 

[Rukbat]

1) A computer that's turned off (not sleeping, waiting for you to push the power button, but turned off) can't be attacked. It's a piece of wire connected to a router. (Or a powered-down wifi adapter connected to the cosmos.) No one has yet come up with a way to upload a virus to an unpowered chip. When they come up with a virus that propagates via the powerlines I'll get worried.

2) Support for privately owned XP ends. Corporate installations will still be supported. Whether that means tech support or security patches remains to be seen.

3) Having been on "the internet" since it was a bunch of military computers connected together and never having downloaded a virus (Novell shipped one once), I wouldn't start quaking in my boots even if I were still running XP. (The only MS OSs I'm running are 7, 8 [my wife needed a new laptop and that's all they had] and 3.11 [yes, it still does what it was designed to do], so I'm not too worried.) My phone is a lot less secure than XP will be in May. Then again, there are people who can take your wallet out of your tightest pocket, remove a debit card and return the wallet without you're being aware. Do you walk around with your hand in your pocket, holding your wallet tight? (Where's the FUDD button?)

 

[mikedt]

1) A computer that's turned off (not sleeping, waiting for you to push the power button, but turned off) can't be attacked. It's a piece of wire connected to a router. (Or a powered-down wifi adapter connected to the cosmos.) No one has yet come up with a way to upload a virus to an unpowered chip. When they come up with a virus that propagates via the powerlines I'll get worried.

2) Support for privately owned XP ends. Corporate installations will still be supported. Whether that means tech support or security patches remains to be seen.

I believe all support for XP ends in April doesn't it, i.e. it's end of life, no exceptions. No more updates, no more anything. Corporate users, if they done the job correctly, shouldn't be using XP by then, they've had plenty of notice. Think the exceptions might be a dedicated XP computer controlling some machinery or process, they have no reason to be on the public internet anyway.

3) Having been on "the internet" since it was a bunch of military computers connected together and never having downloaded a virus (Novell shipped one once), I wouldn't start quaking in my boots even if I were still running XP. (The only MS OSs I'm running are 7, 8 [my wife needed a new laptop and that's all they had] and 3.11 [yes, it still does what it was designed to do], so I'm not too worried.) My phone is a lot less secure than XP will be in May. Then again, there are people who can take your wallet out of your tightest pocket, remove a debit card and return the wallet without you're being aware. Do you walk around with your hand in your pocket, holding your wallet tight? (Where's the FUDD button?)

Think your credit card details are more likely to be stolen by a compromised EPOS terminal. ...ahem, Target, Walmart, TJ Maxx, etc. Most who are likely to take your wallet without you knowing, won't usually put it back. So you might do best you can to avoid being pickpocketed. One thing, never give your credit card to a waiter or otherwise lose sight of it.

Sure most smartphones are more secure than XP, one thing there's been no Android worms so far. Along the lines of Conficker or Code Red, that still roam the interwebs looking for unpatched PCs to infect. And most smart devices don't automatically assume a file is an executable and try and run it, unlike Windows with files on USB sticks. Routers can apparently be compromised as well...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26287517
...so those might not stop any nasties getting through.

 

[Rukbat]

I believe all support for XP ends in April doesn't it, i.e. it's end of life, no exceptions. No more updates, no more anything. Corporate users, if they done the job correctly, shouldn't be using XP by then, they've had plenty of notice.

According to what I've read from MS, support for corporate users continues at least until the end of the current support contract. They got vague after that. (I know a few contracts that were renewed right after the beginning of this year.)

Routers can apparently be compromised as well...
BBC News - Security failings in home routers exposed
...so those might not stop any nasties getting through.

ASUS got caught with their servers down too. Seems that on one of their models, the FTP server is on by default, and connected to the USB port. So your nice big NAS is now part of the public cloud. I think I could make a foortune selling better quality handbaskets for the trip the world is taking.

 

[Muilisx]

No one has yet come up with a way to upload a virus to an unpowered chip.

Perhaps maybe not a full fledged virus, but yes, there are still attacks that can be made with a computer off.

 

[saptech]

There is a way to upload a virus if someone is there locally. I guess once it is powered on but not online, it can be done, the old fashion way!

 

[anoniemouse]

Then you have some laptops & desktops that drivers for windows 7 are not available, leaving you stuck on xp or having to go with linux.
I have a Toshiba satellite circa 2001 that is in this position, still i have 2 hdd's one with xp on & one with ubuntu that i swap to as needed.

 

[jefboyardee]

Windows XP is dying. On April 8, Microsoft will stop supporting the ancient operating system that was released in 2001 — and at one point was used by 400 million people.

Here are your options.

Bad idea #1: Just don’t worry about it

So you can keep using XP, but not without risk. You probably don’t want it connected to the Internet, and even plugging a USB drive into it could be unsafe.
​

Bad idea #2: Upgrade to Windows 8, like Microsoft wants you to

There are two big reasons why this is a bad idea. The first: It probably won’t work. Your old Win XP machine likely does not have the horsepower, the hard disk space, or the hardware to run Windows 8.
​

Bad idea #3: Move to Linux

But here’s why it’s a bad idea: It really is a platform for nerds. Few people you know — unless you know a lot of programmers — will be able to help you out.
​

Bad idea #4: Get a Chromebook

Why is this a bad idea, then? Because Chromebooks rely on a connection to the Internet. Some functions and apps work when disconnected, but most don’t.
​

Better idea #1: Upgrade to Windows 7

The version of Windows that predates Windows 8 is really good. It’s stable and conceptually similar enough to Windows XP that a transition will not be difficult.
​

Better idea #2: Get a Mac

Laptops start at $1000 and desktops at $1,300. Complete Windows machines today start in the $300 range, or very nicely equipped at about $600.
​

You’re not alone

[hacked for brevity]

 

[Davdi]

Bad Idea #3 is just not true these days (unless you have some Windows-specific software without a Linux equivalent) I've converted a couple of silver surfers to Linux (PCLOS & Mint, both KDE) and they can't believe how much faster and more responsive their Prescott-cored P4 boxes are than when running XP. Their main use is surfing, browser games and a little light word processing.

 

[palmtree5]

Bad Idea #3 is just not true these days (unless you have some Windows-specific software without a Linux equivalent) I've converted a couple of silver surfers to Linux (PCLOS & Mint, both KDE) and they can't believe how much faster and more responsive their Prescott-cored P4 boxes are than when running XP. Their main use is surfing, browser games and a little light word processing.

:ditto:

 

[mikedt]

Windows XP is dying. On April 8, Microsoft will stop supporting the ancient operating system that was released in 2001

 

[Unforgiven]

No big deal, but I removed an unrelated link and some no longer needed comment about it via post edits. No worries, probably a copy / paste error.

 

[jefboyardee]

No big deal, but I removed an unrelated link

Assuming it was the wrong link, I've just put the correct one up there.

 

[saptech]

It seems the masses do not want 'Bad Idea #3' to be an alternative for some unknown reason!

I know why, there is no big money to be made by a very few...

 

[jefboyardee]

I'm sure it's because of me being unable to take it seriously, but after months of dinking with it, I've decided that Linux is just an amazing toy. My current opinion was also preformed by thinking the same thing going into it. I know it's a serious tool in some situations, but I'm not in that situation.

I keep Linux Mint installed on a 10GB partition and do further dinking when the mood strikes me. I use W7HP 99.9% of the time on my made-for-XP beast and Mint, the current Linux leader, can't come close in terms of operability... flame away.

 

[palmtree5]

Mint, the current Linux leader, can't come close in terms of operability

Please explain!

 

[jefboyardee]

I don't want to rekindle an old war, but let's just say that Mint, although it tries very hard to act like a GUI OS, still requires me to research, learn and enter terminal commands just to make basic changes. For instance, there are at least three ways to uninstall an app and in some cases, none of them work.

Mint is still Linux and is not as easily reconfigured as Windows, at least not for someone from Windows. Perhaps I'll learn the terminal like the back of my hand and all my problems will be solved, but I don't see that ever happening. Why should I, when I really don't need to?

 

[mikedt]

I'm sure XP will serve for a few years yet as an embedded OS. Apparently most ATMs are using XP, but then they're serving just one purpose, no one is browsing or installing whatever software on ATMs, and they're not on the public internet.

Public electronic ad billboards are usually running on XP as well. But again these are a single specialised application, not on the public internet, no one is installing their own software or browsing. As long as the manufacturer still supports the hardware and makes spares available, can't see no reason why they shouldn't continue to be used. I know many electronic billboards are running on XP, because occasionally see them either BSOD or showing the default XP screen saver....LOL

 

[saptech]

I don't want to rekindle an old war, but let's just say that Mint, although it tries very hard to act like a GUI OS, still requires me to research, learn and enter terminal commands just to make basic changes. For instance, there are at least three ways to uninstall an app and in some cases, none of them work.

Mint is still Linux and is not as easily reconfigured as Windows, at least not for someone from Windows. Perhaps I'll learn the terminal like the back of my hand and all my problems will be solved, but I don't see that ever happening. Why should I, when I really don't need to?

True Linux is not for everyone. But sometimes, with so many different distros, one have to try a few different ones until you find the right one. That is what they mean by distro hopping. It must be a bug in Mint if it's not uninstalling apps.

 

[mikedt]

I don't want to rekindle an old war, but let's just say that Mint, although it tries very hard to act like a GUI OS, still requires me to research, learn and enter terminal commands just to make basic changes. For instance, there are at least three ways to uninstall an app and in some cases, none of them work.

From what I've seen, it's always Windows where uninstallers don't completely uninstall whatever they're supposed to be uninstalling, or they just fail completely. And you're left trying to clean the mess up yourself, and good luck manually purging the registry if you don't really know what you're doing, could render the system unbootable.

Which is a good thing about Linux OSs, they don't have an opaque byzantine fragile registry. Most configuration stuff are just easily editable plain text files.

 

[jefboyardee]

From what I've seen, it's always Windows where uninstallers don't completely uninstall whatever they're supposed to be uninstalling, or they just fail completely.

Before I install anything I take a Rollback snapshot so I can just return to that point. For stuff I already installed, Absolute Uninstaller does the job pretty well. But I know what you mean.

 

[saptech]

Before I install anything I take a Rollback snapshot so I can just return to that point. For stuff I already installed, Absolute Uninstaller does the job pretty well. But I know what you mean.

And see, there is where the problem lies with Windows, you shouldn't have to do all that when you've paid good money for the OS and MS is a multi-billion dollar company. It should have solved this issue long ago, along with alot of their other issues.

I can understand Linux having certain issues, since they do not have the resources as MS & Apple. Alot of the Linux distros are done by a handful of people or a one person seetup. Not including the Linux corps.

Just my thoughts!

 

[Unforgiven]

Let's stay focused on the topic at hand here which is XP being EOL'd and the need to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. The pro's and con's of Windows & Linux, native platform security, and user skillset requirement differences between the two can be discussed elsewhere.

*ahem

 

[palmtree5]

*ahem

To that end, I made this thread