Windows 8.1 is a good operating system.
If you’re still using XP, it’s time to upgrade.
Just saying...
Somewhere there’s somebody still clinging to DOS 6.22.
One of my machines still uses win2k just fine. It’s just used as a recording studio with Sonar and Winamp for playback and rehearsal, so it doesn’t need much.
I have a desktop and a laptop, both run Win 7 64 bit. I keep them both updated and only had one problem with an update wrecking an application.
IMHO the best DOS version was 3.3 from the standpoint of capability vs memory footprint, but 6 for all the bells and whistles. For Windows, 2000 was the best version for capability vs memory footprint. A fresh install without patches would use 35 meg total and run like a scalded ape. But most modern apps won’t run on it and no drivers available for modern hardware. You apply all 6 patches and it’s as bloated as XP and s-l-o-w.
For people who don’t mind fiddling with the OS and apps, I thing Linux or BSD is a viable option to Windows.
If you’re still using XP, it’s time to upgrade.
Just saying...
I doubt you can go straight from XP to 8.1. You'd probably have to go incrementally, from XP to 7, then 7 to 8, then you can go 8 to 8.1. I've done XP to 7, and XP to 2003 on servers. I also did NT to XP way back when (NT...shudder).
Pretty much every computer at the place I work is running XP, save for some of the upper management. I don’t know that they really WANT to upgrade.
I work in a call center for a transportation company. The management wants to have restrictions on what programs and services the agents can access, and I think they’re concerned that they won’t have the control that XP allows them to have.
The second concern that I KNOW they have is cost. It ain’t gonna be cheap, that’s for sure.
Loads of luck getting drivers to support those old cards.
You ignore the expense of all the software that will then be incompatible with Win 8.
Linix Mint is a good operating system as well. Not to mention apparently the most popular 'nix OS out there for many months now. And free. I use a different version, personally, but considering the last time I looked the second-most popular 'nix distro (Debian) had been downloaded well over 1000 times, and Mint was over 3000 and climbing...
Must be doing something right.