Replies

The sky is not going to fall. WinXP is sufficiently robust now to be plugged directly into an unfiltered Internet connection. Whoever was likely to click on every link on the screen already got his due and now knows better. There are antivirus packages, lots of them, that do a pretty good job on identifying harmful content.

On top of that, the percentage of WinXP customers will keep dropping as computers that XP runs on are failing, or otherwise removed from circulation. This will be a low interest target for hackers.

On top of that, what are those shops who run XP and are blissfully unaware? Those are car mechanics, pizza places, dry cleaners, and similar small businesses. They are not an interesting target for a hacker anyway, because they contain no c/c data and because they are connected to the Internet via the cheapest and slowest link; this makes them poor candidates for a zombie box.

My prediction is that those XP boxes will remain in use until their date of natural expiration - because the computer fails, or because the user buys a new accounting package that doesn't run on XP anymore. Boxes at homes will also remain in use because there is nothing wrong with XP as it is. As matter of fact, Win7/8 does not buy you anything. Win7 is a bit faster, but it runs on newer hardware too. Many XP boxes cannot be upgraded. Win8 is a poor choice for anyone, unless you are capable of finding and installing 3rd party software that restores usability.

I switched this PC from WinXP to Win8 and it’s OK as far as it goes. Bought the $40 download in December and I am reasonably happy with it. It’s not the greatest Windows ever, but acceptable.

I certainly wouldn’t pay retail price for it. It’s not $160 good. It’s $40 good and you get what you pay for.

When this box fails, I’m most likely going to go to Ubuntu or some “ix/ux” based OS that is open source.

I have had enough of Microsoft, and Apple too for that matter.

“There are antivirus packages, lots of them, that do a pretty good job on identifying harmful content.”

I’d have to disagree with that one. They may be able to identify harmful programs, but they certainly fail when it comes to stopping infections from happening, or repairing a machine that has become infected. I’ve tried pretty much every commercial and shareware/freeware AV program out there, and they all fall short when facing the newer generation of malware.

The best I can say about AV software at this point is that it can be a good alert system, since they will usually catch at least one or two parts of the malware package being installed. So, they can give you an early warning that you need to get into safe mode fast and try to do your own removal and repairs of all the stuff that the AV software undoubtedly let slip through, before your machine is completely locked down.