I've struggled maintaining many laptops with MS XP. I learned this week from the IT folks at work that I need to reformat and reinstall the OS no less than once a year.
I also learned that MS will no longer support XP in the Spring of 2014; and so the machines will be exposed to malware.
At what point should I abandon XP and move to a newer OS?
The market is in a Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8i transition. Does it matter what system I go to? Should I go with the latest? Is a touch screen option valuable or nice to have?
I'm only doing basic MS Office work on one machine. On another, I'm doing MS Office and some basic autocad for my wife's landscape architecture business.
What do you suggest?
What's the minimum system I need to upgrade to? memory? processor?
Get off of XP as soon as you can. It would probably be best to buy a new computer with a faster processor and hard drive and a lot more memory. Something like Intel i3, i5 or i7, dual or quad core. SATA II or III hard drive and 8GB or more of memory.
I just bought a new Lenovo IdeaCenter K450 which has a Intel 4th Gen I7 3.4Ghz Quad Core processor, 2TB 7200 rpm SATA III hard drive and 16GB ram. It is very, very fast. I then added my old 128GB SSD drive and it's even faster.
I would recommend Windows 8 Pro 64 bit. The Windows 8.1 upgrade is free if you decide you want it. I don't and will wait for 8.2 to see what it has that I may want.
Windows 7 was released in December of 2009 so is already 4 years old. It's a great OS but so is Windows 8. It can be a bit difficult to use compared to Windows 7 or XP, but it can be tamed.
Start Button:
If you install Classic Shell (free) or Stardock's Start8 ($4.99) or similar software then you can have the Start button as it was in Windows 7 and boot directly to the Desktop. You can still play with Metro stuff but it's not forced on you.
UAC:
I find UAC extremely annoying. If you do too then to (mostly) disable UAC, Press Windows key + R to open the Run window.
Type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Tools tab.
Select Change UAC settings and click Launch.
Move the slider all the way to the bottom then click OK.
Some parts of UAC will still be alive, so to completely disable it you need to change a registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Key: EnableLUA
Set the value to 0
You cannot use any Metro Apps or the App Store when UAC is disabled. If you've gone this far, you can also disable all hot corners so you will not get any of the Windows Charms popups. Just check the Classic Shell and Start8 options to do this.
I learned this week from the IT folks at work that I need to reformat and reinstall the OS no less than once a year.
If that is what they said then I'm afraid they are plain wrong!
I agree however with Ztruker's remarks, but would add that it's worth trying out a Win 8 or 8.1 machine first before actually buying one. Some folks swear by them and some swear at them!
If you have a good try-out and explore Win 8 or 8.1 and are happy with it and can figure out how to use it effectively then fine, go ahead and buy one.
However there are quite a few folks who just find it totally hopeless, and bewildering, with some folks finding it an impossibly steep learning curve (whilst others take to it like a duck to water!)
Its important to weigh things up carefully before you spend your hard earned cash.
Some of my customers believe that one day (but not yet) Win 8.1 or later versions will become a fine operating system…. but in the meantime they are buying Win 7 machines with upgrade discs included to change to Win 8 etc., at a later date (that way they have the best of both worlds, and with Win 7 the transition from Win XP is pretty easy whereas the transition from Win XP to 8 can be difficult for some.
Some retailers are not keen on selling new machines preinstalled with Win 7 but they are available often through the retailer's business division…)
Yes that's fine, but remember if they are running Xp then they will be unsafe to use on the Internet from April 8th without taking extra ordinary precautions. However if you isolate them from any network (including your home network) and they are currently clear of malware or malicious code, then you could continue to use them for making documents and printing them etc or playing your music or looking at your photos….but keep them away from the Internet, and don't plug in any USB drives or use any memory cards etc or allow them to interact with any other machine or data source….
Some folks would say that you need to take extra care in the run up to April 2014 anyway …and presumably you have good up to date images created when the machines were working well, free of all junk files, malware etc and running fast and sweet?
Hello there. Found this thread right away when I started to look for what to do come April.
A few more questions from this OCD guy…..
Does one
Upgrade to Win 7
Buy Win 7 and install it in current computer (Dell Vostro 200, wife's is 400?)
Buy new computer with Win 7
?
And this is not a good budget moment for new computers or maybe even OSes, although we always get them from eBay resellers. Alternative plans?
I am quite comfortable with XP (well, I was quite comfortable with 3.1). Will hate learning new protocols, start button equivalents, desktop or whatever! Glad to hear Win 7 is not too big a jump. Is there a red-hot primer out there? (Guess one will come w/the OS).
The worst kept secret around at moment is that a serious desktop OS, code named "Threshold" will be released in April 2015 to replace the 'tanked' and deeply unpopular W8 / W8.1 (don't believe me, just google and look at the woeful sales figures and market share).
To distance itself from the Windows 8 debacle, Microsoft is currently planning to drop the Windows 8 name and brand this next release as Windows 9
… In short, it needs to be everything that Windows 8 is not.
Most W8 'sales' now are not sales at all, they are actually PC sales where W8 is forced onto the buyer, a bit like that other desktop horror story was when it was released, VISTA!
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