Microsoft XP's days are numbered

[Strong]

New 'advanced format' hard drives that use 4k per blocks will leave XP out in the cold, because it will not be able to read the drives. Thus upgrading your computers with these new drives will be impossible.

Newer OSs will not have a problem, but XP was designed before the new formats were created. There is talk of work arounds, but these may slow down the read/write process.

BBC News - Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8557144.stm)

Time to start thinking about changing OS if you haven't already.

[pctec]

Thats too bad because in my opinion XP was the best OS they had so far...

[tsdesigns]

It doesn't mean it's days are numbered...just the people who want to use XP won't be able to use those hard-drives.

IMO Win7 is much better anyway.

[Big Dan]

IMHO Vista for the complaints it garnered was better than XP. Win 7 is much better than XP. Unless your running old hardware or apps that won't run on the Windows 7 platform that's no reason to stick with XP other than pure stubbornness. :p

[pctec]

pure stubbornness. :p

I have been accused of that more than once :D

[Zap]

Gotta disagree with you guys on this.
In the fall, I bought a new laptop. It came with Vista (which I had used on my old laptop and ditched it for XP).
I decided to try Windows 7 on the new one.
It was far better than Vista, for sure. Zipping and unzipping of files was quicker and copying files across the network was also faster. (But still not as fast as XP).
Then, strange things started to happen. I lost the ability to use the touchpad on the laptop. I had to plug in an external mouse. I reinstalled the touchpad drivers a few times, but could not get the touchpad working. Then, IE started to crash on certain page loads. I would try the same page later and it would be fine.
In the end, for my own sanity, I did the same thing with this laptop that I did with my other one. I removed that version of Windows and put XP on it. Everything is better now. Zipping and unzipping files takes a fraction of the time it took with Vista and 7. Copying files over the network is also much quicker on XP than Vista or 7. Whatever they did to the networking components of Vista/7, they'd better get fixed for Windows 8!

[pctec]

You wouldn't be disagreeing with me as I said XP was the best OS MS ever made :)


Gotta disagree with you guys on this.
In the fall, I bought a new laptop. It came with Vista (which I had used on my old laptop and ditched it for XP).
I decided to try Windows 7 on the new one.
It was far better than Vista, for sure. Zipping and unzipping of files was quicker and copying files across the network was also faster. (But still not as fast as XP).
Then, strange things started to happen. I lost the ability to use the touchpad on the laptop. I had to plug in an external mouse. I reinstalled the touchpad drivers a few times, but could not get the touchpad working. Then, IE started to crash on certain page loads. I would try the same page later and it would be fine.
In the end, for my own sanity, I did the same thing with this laptop that I did with my other one. I removed that version of Windows and put XP on it. Everything is better now. Zipping and unzipping files takes a fraction of the time it took with Vista and 7. Copying files over the network is also much quicker on XP than Vista or 7. Whatever they did to the networking components of Vista/7, they'd better get fixed for Windows 8!

[Big Dan]

I've always used 3rd party tools to zip/unzip mostly because I work with a lot of tar files. 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org) is awesome. Although something as basic as file compression should not regress in new versions.

I also cannot really speak on local network speeds as I don't use those features much but I'm also agreed that core features like that should only improve with newer versions.

That being said I'm still pretty happy with XP. Any time I boot an XP machine and look at it's desktop I cannot help but think I'm stuck in 2002. My biggest beef with XP is that you have to run a 3rd party firewall for any real protection and that is a performance hit.

[Zap]

The other thing to mention is that XP boots faster and runs faster on the exact same hardware.
I've regressed to XP from Vista on one laptop and from 7 to XP on another. In both cases, everything ran much faster once XP was installed.

[tsdesigns]

The other thing to mention is that XP boots faster and runs faster on the exact same hardware.
I've regressed to XP from Vista on one laptop and from 7 to XP on another. In both cases, everything ran much faster once XP was installed.

That might just be because of a fresh install of the OS, not the OS itself.

I wouldn't have said Vista was better than XP (it did look nicer, but thats about it from my experiences with it). But Win7 I would have to say is much better, as far as I can tell Win7 boots much faster than XP did, I haven't noticed it taking longer with zipping/unzipping but I don't do much of that really.

[Zap]

That might just be because of a fresh install of the OS, not the OS itself.
Possibility in other cases, perhaps, but not mine.
I didn't have Windows 7 long enough to gunk it up.

Also, I had a ton of files to transfer over from laptop to laptop, copied across the network.
Copying the same files takes much longer on Vista or 7 than on XP.
Try it yourself.

[ewomack]

XP was also on SP3 when Win7 came out. Early releases of any MS OS typically have gut-wrenching problems until SP456 appears. Was XP great before SP3? Or maybe Win7 will be great after SP321? This seems to be a pattern with MS: release an almost embarrassing product to take advantage of the market rush, then gradually fix it until the next release. By the time the new OS arrives everyone loves the "fixed" product so then the new product seems utterly repulsive.

I didn't really have any problems with Win2000, WinXP, or Win7 on their first releases, but I nonetheless heard lots of horror stories similar to Zap's. The polymorphicity of existence strikes again!!!