For XP Users April 2014

[VFN]

Is it going to be any sort of problem for XP users when it's no longer supported in 2014? Would it be a good idea for those who can afford it to think about changing to 8 or even getting a new tower?

Thanks.

 

[richc46]

XP will no longer be supported; no security updates or any other updates. The big problem here is that all the people that have the desire to cause you problems will have a free hand. Your ID may be stolen, bank accounts, stock accounts etc. That being said XP will work as it does today, unless someone taps into the system and causes problems.
You now have all the facts and it is up to you to decide if you want to switch. If it were me, I would go with 7.

 

[VFN]

Thanks. I'll relay this to those XP users I'm concerned about.

 

[townsbg]

XP will no longer be supported; no security updates or any other updates. The big problem here is that all the people that have the desire to cause you problems will have a free hand. Your ID may be stolen, bank accounts, stock accounts etc. That being said XP will work as it does today, unless someone taps into the system and causes problems.
You now have all the facts and it is up to you to decide if you want to switch. If it were me, I would go with 7.

Also the antivirus companies will eventually stop supporting it. I'm sure the first to go would be MSE. IMO people should already be off of it. I'm glad that I am.

 

[VFN]

I see that your a Mac user, townsbg. Is Boot Camp or a virtual program a viable way to use windows on a Mac. I ask because my parents would rather use a Mac than a PC but there are a few programs--one online client/insurance/billing --that they can't use with a Mac. They currently have a Macbook Pro with an Intel chip which I think is required for Boot Camp and an Ipad.

Thanks

 

[NoelDP]

Put it this way..
I've just installed AutoCAD into Win7 x64 on BootCamp on a MacBook Pro, and it runs reasonably well - although with only 4GB RAM installed it may choke on any really large drawings!

It's certainly an option to consider if they are committed Mac users, and already have the hardware.

 

[NoelDP]

....and an alternative would be to run Parallells - so you can have both OSX and Windows running at the same time (assuming that you have enough RAM) with Windows in a VM.

 

[townsbg]

I see that your a Mac user, townsbg. Is Boot Camp or a virtual program a viable way to use windows on a Mac. I ask because my parents would rather use a Mac than a PC but there are a few programs--one online client/insurance/billing --that they can't use with a Mac. They currently have a Macbook Pro with an Intel chip which I think is required for Boot Camp and an Ipad.

Thanks

I use Vmware fusion which is good and you can run Vista/7 in full graphics for the Aero affect. Boot camp is actually a component used for creating a dual boot setup as compared to a virtual machine fusion however can run a boot camp installation as a virtual machine. There is also Microsoft's Virtual PC (which is expensive) and Virtual Box if you want a free platform. Parallells is a bit more expensive than fusion and I don't know anything about that. There might be other methods but I don't know of any.

When I had Snow Leopard I had 7 on bootcamp and I could access it with Fusion. I set up a third partition using most of the hard drive space and formatted it as exfat so that both Windows and Mac could write files there. When I installed Mountain Lion I couldn't get the same set up to work so I only have Windows as a virtual machine. Lately though I hardly ever use Windows on my mac.

 

[VFN]

Thanks for all the feedback.

 

[townsbg]

I was looking for a fusion update to see that they haven't released a update for version 5 but they have released version 6 which is suppose to be compatible with the next version of Mac as well as Windows 8.1 if you really care about either. It costs $130 USD which is a lot more than previous versions and more than Parallells.