When I get my new vista computer very soon, should I still keep my 2001 XP Pro computer? Since Microsoft will no longer this year sell computers with XP in them and next year will no longer provide updates and support for XP, will that mean that major software venders will also pull support for XP?
And back during 2001 I still at that time had a Pentium 2 win98 pc. Still wanted to keep that one at the time so the independent tech I had came over and what I wanted was to get the two networked so they can share the cable connection. That way I wouldn't have to pay for a new connection. At that time I was using a netgear router. At the time netgear was good. Because of compatibility issues the win98 pc became the main pc on the network. And the new computer became the secondary on the network.
So with an older pc like this 2001 pc now will it just be a hassle to get this now old 2001 xp pc to work with a new vista computer? I have now a lynksis router.
Thanks.
toruser
Quick answer is YES - you can keep your XP PC as it can/will "talk: with your new Vista-based PC -provided they are on the same Local area Nework and configure for the SAME home network name. One thing which will make connectivity between the old XP and Vista PCs would be to configure your accounts on BOTH system with the SAME username / password. This will make sharing files/printer/etc work cleanly.
I'm personally running a Windows HOME workgroup network with both VISTA & XP PC's - with shared printer/folders and it's working just FINE.
Hope this helps.
- John
Thank you. And to my other question. Will major software venders stop support and updates for programs that work on xp? And will those major software venders stop producing programs in the future to work with xp? Since after all Microsoft will stop support and selling xp soon.
toruser,
My experience is that Microsoft is very slow and cautious about retiring support for any operating system with a LARGE install base. XP is EVERYWHERE and I don't see Microsoft abandoning it for at least 5-8 years. The other good thing is that XP and Vista, at their core, aren't so DRASTICALLY different that application compatibility should be a huge issue. I'm sure there are specific exceptions to this - but in general, the are quite similar in terms of the types of software they'll run.. I've personally only encountered about 2-3 older XP compatible programs that won'r run on Vista.
The corporate world is generally the LAST to adopt new version of Windows as such upgrades are costly, time-consuming and tend to cause technical issues. Considering Microsoft's HUGE market share in corporate/business environements - the're NOT simply going to abandon support for XP and force everyone to Vista. Up untill a few years ago - many large companies were still running Windows 95/98! Also consider Office 2003 versus Office 2007. Microsoft has already released patches to make Office 2007 files backwards compatible with Office 2003 since 2003 is still VERY prevalent in the corporate workplace.
As it specifically relates to YOU, I'd need to know the applications you're running in order to say for sure if they're going to continue to be supported under Windows XP. My guess is that they will.
Hope this helps.
- John
Yeah I was really starting to think that Microsoft was abandoning XP when Kim Komando at komando.com just last week said what I told you she says that Microsfot is stopping support and sales of xp. You've said otherwise. So maybe she's wrong. I hope. Thanks.
toruser,
While Microsoft may no longer be SELLING XP, there's a extremely LARGE installed base of XP - so they're not going to stop supporting it anytime soon. Large corporations have several THOUSAND copies of XP installed and upgrading all of those systems to Vista is a slow and costly process. That said, Microsoft simply CANNOT abandon XP anytime in the near future as it relates to support. I'm guessing that XP will still be around for at LEAST another 5 years. I say this because I've worked in a corporate environment and I know how long Micrsosoft continued to support Windows 9X.
Just because they're no longer SELLING XP - doesn't mean that they're simply going to abandon it. Microsoft makes the BULK of it's OS Sales revenues on corporate site licenses. Since XP (and even Win9X) is still prevalent in corporate America - Microsoft would be shooting themselves in the foot if the abruptly stopped supporting XP..
- John
MIcrosoft have announced that they would probably stop selling XP version's 14 Nov.2009. But then again, they have even this under consideration because of the huge number of new small laptops, which can't run Vista. And MS aint likely to let that market-share slip through their hands. So very likely we may see new XP home CD's being sold yet again, despite their announcement.
Anyways, support for windows XP will continue up and till minimum 2014.
One of the advantage to keeping your old computer is that you can then use the older computer as a network storage device - an place to quickly and easily backup your critical data.
Great idea. This old computer actually has a capacity of 200GB hard drive space. And I've only used up 39.5GB of the disk. And now that you mention backups,, I've heard of carbonite.com, but are all the rest of these back up devices other hard drives? What is the typical lifespan of a hard drive? And how would you know when your hard drive is soon to die of age?
I've seen somewhere on tech tv stories of people who one day turned on their computer to find out their hard drive just died. You would think there would be some warning sign to let you know your drive is about to bite the dust.
There usually is a warning of some sort - depending on what goes wrong - the drive motor may start whining, the RW actuator arm may start grinding, and you may start getting disk error.
The drive maker will have diagnostics on their website. And running chkdsk /r helps too.
Most drives do last for years - even 10 years. Most seem to last 5 - 7, or so it seems around here.
I don't use a backup program - rather I have a RAID1 Mirror setup for a real time backup. I also store everything some where under My Documents. So when I want to backup all my personal data (which is worth much more to me than the hardware) I just drag my entire My Documents folder over to the drive on the networked computer. Piece of cake.
Sorry - RAID - Redundant Array of Independent (some times seen as "Inexpensive") Drives - I have two identical hard drives connected to a RAID controller - Windows sees both drives as one, but the controller sees the two as two identical drives. If one go bad, the exact image just continues on.
