Windows XP - Goodbye old friend - really?
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
Well not exactly "Goodbye" - more like retired to the basement...
Despite fighting many battles with XP over the years and several disk format/clean installs, I have been relatively happy with XP.
But, with Microsoft dropping support on April 8, I decided it was time to move on - sort of...
Last week I went to a local computer shop and had a custom PC built with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit loaded and 8GB of RAM.
The old XP machine has moved to the basement where it will stay connected to the LAN but not to the internet.
Since I still use Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise, VB6, and Vbscripts with ActiveX components, I want to keep that computer as is.
Surprisingly, I was able to load MS Office XP (with Access) and Outlook 2003 onto the new computer and they seem to work well.
Learning the tricks and "features" of Windows 7 has been a real trip so far but I am starting to feel more comfortable since booting it up for the first time on Friday.
Some of my software and hardware won't work (e.g. no drivers for my scanner).
Got a feeling there are more issues waiting to bite me though
Despite fighting many battles with XP over the years and several disk format/clean installs, I have been relatively happy with XP.
But, with Microsoft dropping support on April 8, I decided it was time to move on - sort of...
Last week I went to a local computer shop and had a custom PC built with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit loaded and 8GB of RAM.
The old XP machine has moved to the basement where it will stay connected to the LAN but not to the internet.
Since I still use Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise, VB6, and Vbscripts with ActiveX components, I want to keep that computer as is.
Surprisingly, I was able to load MS Office XP (with Access) and Outlook 2003 onto the new computer and they seem to work well.
Learning the tricks and "features" of Windows 7 has been a real trip so far but I am starting to feel more comfortable since booting it up for the first time on Friday.
Some of my software and hardware won't work (e.g. no drivers for my scanner).
Got a feeling there are more issues waiting to bite me though
Comments
How do you do this part? Is your LAN connected to the Internet, and then you block outside access in your router?
Anyway, Win7 is a pretty good OS. Most of my machines now have it. Like you, I still have an XP box for my ancient Acer scanner. There's an outfit that offers -- for a fairly hefty fee -- software and drivers for it, but IMO its interface is very clunky.
I've got one XP machine, and it's my primary Prop dev machine. I'll replace it with Mac OS, when we get more open tools for P1 & P2, and I sometimes do some work on Win 7.
Honestly, I like 7. It's a good OS. Regarding drivers, always go looking for Vista drivers for old gear. Often 7 can use them, and it's been a nice "out" for some devices I have, like my video capture.
Also know, 32 bit 7 is different from 64 bit 7. 32 bit 7 can run unsigned drivers. 64 bit is more of a PITA in that it wants signed ones, unless you want to hack around some. If you are using older things, you might consider the 32 bit version, particularly if you don't need tons of RAM.
I haven't tried this yet, but it seems logical http://www.ehow.com/how_5084482_disable-internet-access.html
I would prefer to block it in the router, but haven't researched that yet...
EDIT: Especially since there are programs that access the internet directly rather than thru a browser.
I have not tried XP mode either. With the 64-bit OS, finding drivers for older hardware can be a problem. My Epson 1650 scanner for example. Their is a product called VueScan ($40) but I may just leave it the scanner on the old PC or on my XP netbook.
I have a ICS firewall Windows XP SP3 virtual workstation with the standard firewall and additional exceptions. It's formatted NTFS and has the root of drive c: shared for authenticated users and the system account. Credentials range from "administrator" with a password of "12345" to another administrative user called "user" with a password of "user". It is connected directly to a static IP and in a DMZ (wide open). It is running Google XAMPP and serving a fake company intranet on port 80. Port 3389 (remote desktop) is also enabled.
If you haven't guessed it yet, it is a honeypot. Nobody has touched it in months. In fact I'm starting to get a little concerned about using a honey pot in the first place. It seems now hackers aren't into probing for unprotected computers vs. servers. Setup an email service on port 25, whole different story.
Let's think about it. Most of the people still using XP either know what they're doing, or have really old crappy computers and no desire to upgrade. On the other hand, you can SQL inject a site, or DNS hijack some ad space, and hit millions more people.
So XP won't get critical updates anymore, but with a little TLC, you probably never needed them for security anyway (minus the blaster sasser days and people with no router/public wifi).
Adding a fake proxy to IE will only stop IE, you'd have to do that to your other browsers as well. Personally I'd get a good software firewall to lock it down and closely monitor it. Monitoring it is the only way you'll ever know what is going on with it. Nothing that comes with Windows XP allows you to do that.
Since some programs automatically access to the net to check for updates, etc, - it seems possible that malware could infect your system without "user intervention".
I use Norton Internet Security. It's firewall block all network traffic easily and I'm pretty sure you can set up rules to block certain ports, etc.
Need to delve into that a little more.
I tried the V4 software - no luck. Then I discovered another WIN7 "feature". Driver files are stored in a different place and not named OEMxx.INF although something in the OS gives them an alias of OEMxx.inf if you look at them in a certain way. CORRECTION: I was able to find the OEMxx.inf driver files after all. Not sure what my problem was!
I love how Microsoft tries to protect people from themselves and manage to make it difficult for advanced users...
What does it take to get you guys off of expensive, closed source, single supplier, proprietary, dead end operating systems?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
Let's see...
Windows 7 - 47.3%
Windows XP - 29.5%
Windows 8 - 10.7%
MAC OS X - 7.7%
Other - 4.4%
Vista - 3.1%
Linux - 1.5%
...Anyway ended up just purging the system and upgraded to the latest Supported Windows (that we happened to have an install disk for), but I tell you what. When it comes to installing drivers and software, even from reputable sources, it can be a nightmare with all of the other BLOAT included. In fact, honestly, there needs to be a lawsuit it's ridiculous. It's worse than the AOL monopoly several years ago.
All of my computers are native Linux... if I need to run windows, it's usually in a shell. That way I can completely encapsulate a "known to be good and stable" environment in case something goes nuts with Windows. I'm trying to persuade my wife to go with Linux. .....Sigh.
No doubt. However, how does that answer my question?
Are you saying people should continue to do that because, well, that's what people do?
Not at all but the amount software available for the Windows platform and the corporate needs/support for things like SQL server, etc keep it at the forefront.
I don't think you'll find too many Fortune 500 companies using Linux (or other OS) for mission critical systems.
Really? I thought that Linux is what you used for mission critical systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Servers
Maybe for mail and web servers but for scalable, load-balancing, relational database servers I'll bet Windows servers are chosen.
Plus Windows is used widely in office environments. If people use it at work, they're more likely to use it at home.
Well, I don't know how to get data to support or refute that claim. It's hard enough just figuring out what the market share of various database technologies are, let alone which OS they run on (and some of the best are OS agnostic).
When I started at one Fortune 500 company (actually more like Fortune 100) they were using OS2 on desktop PC's since the head of Technical Services was an ex-IBMer.
They had a need to develop applications to run on laptops in the field.
I was hired and convinced my boss we could quickly develop such applications in Visual Basic 6.0. The head of Tech services fought us and told us OS2 would be around in that company for a long time.
We went ahead with Windows, VB6 and Access databases - were very successful.
In a very few years, OS2 was gone and so was the head of Technical Services. Their intranet was developed using Visual Studio, SQL Server and IIS.
Fortune #11 and no.
Our email farms are Exchange on Windows because Outlook is the email client deployed on the windows desktop. These email farms are being virtualized on Linux Farms (see below). Small to mid sized applications and data bases run on Windows Server. Mid to large applications and data bases run on *nix (becoming more and more Linux) servers. Mission critical applications run on *nix servers.
The majority of the "Network" systems are *nix based. I don't think anyone wants their central office switch to BSOD when they want to call Grandma or 9-1-1.
Over the past few years, windows servers have been virtualized on large Linux farms (just goes to prove behind every good Windows server is a Linux server!
Mega large multi-hundred terabyte Oracle databases are built on LARGE UNIX servers and use Oracle RAC for replication and high availability features.
Many of the truly large applications are of a generation that don't scale well horizontally, the only way to achieve the vertical scaling is through MONSTER *nix servers. The newer generation applications are designed to scale horizontally and that is across virtual Linux images.
"Big Data" applications (Hadoop and such) are built across multi-rack Linux clusters.
Windows servers are still being used for departmental and smaller applications. As they reach end of life or enter re-engineering cycles, they are being migrated to Linux servers (license fees add up when you get into the 20,000 server range).
True that Windows worked well in providing front ends and rapid deployment add-ons to legacy mainframe applications but now, Linux is just as capable in that realm (without the license costs).
Bottom line, it comes down to the right tool for the job as with most things. The pendulum is currently swinging toward Linux and away from Windows as the server technology of choice.
Windows is by far the predominant desktop deployment due to Office and Outlook, I will give you that much.
That's very interesting - your experiences are different from mine but I've been retired for 12 years and technology is constantly in a state of flux.
Like you said, it boils down to using the right tool for the job and each company (or home user) needs to decide what they need/expect with regard to computer usage.
If you're just going to browse the internet and update your Facebook page - no big deal. If you play computer games all day - don't really know - I am not a gamer.
I like to program using Visual Basic and I use spreadsheets frequently so Windows fits - although sometimes it gives me fits
Oh - and play with Propellers, Basic Stamps, etc.
"Can it run Microsoft Office" they invariably ask a I roll my eyes in a time-worn response. "There's LibreOffice which does the same thing and opens your old documents" I say. "But it looks different" (as if the previous version of MSO was identical to the next) etc etc. "What about the Internet?"...... and so on.
So really these is no reason why the majority of people couldn't just use Linux although for some specilaized apps such as Photoshop you still need Windows (or a Mac). But what if Adobe ever ported Photoshop to Linux? Man, that would turn the tide completely, it would be the catalyst for many to switch to Linux and you what, with Cairo dock etc you can make it look and feel more like a Mac too.
Still can't buy a new laptop though without paying Big Brother Big Bucks Bill.
That would be nice. I don't like Gimp or qtpfsgui (for HDR), and that's pretty much the last thing that makes Linux life incomplete. Well, that and a proper HTML WYSIWYG editor.
You can't fix it with penguins. The software vendors don't support Linux. You'd have to make the software vendors stop supporting Windows first.
MySQL won't do what MS SQL will do or the application they want to use is tightly coupled to MS SQL or Windows .net environment. Application developmers need to be more open minded...maybe they could sell more of their applications if there weren't $36k in license fees associated with it. Maybe the applcation business model needs to be more sophisticated than just jumping on the MS coat tails.
Supporting software is always a major concern for small companies and corporations. Who do you turn to for support if you are using open source products?
Are there very many commercial software packages or applications for Linux? What kind of program development tools are used - something like Visual Studio?
Nobody doing business with others in mainstream spaces deploys open code because interoperability and dependencies related to those products are all over the place.
This is precisely why I still run Windows, though my new gig would put me on the Mac, if I wanted. Limitations there though. Lots of them, but no so many as to make it impossible.
Notably, as more things move to web services, the more possible it is to run OSS.
Mission critical in major niches, such as life sciences, energy, visualization, big data analytics, networking, web services, data center, etc... can and do run on OSS, or a unix of some sort. Count the NSA and others in there too.
If you are the source of data, and need little application data interoperability, OSS works. This is why so many developers can run it.
If you need big applications, like MCAD, forget Linux but for a vendor or two, and a lot of $$$. That is my general niche, and demand for Mac OS and Linux is there. Vendor support is not, and a huge part of all that is a tight marriage to the MFC and strong desire for native desktop performance and interaction model. (though both of those are less than optimal for those with the skills --problem is those with skills are few and far between.)
MS OFFICE is a pita. Open Office and friends can do the work, but not optimally, and more importantly, do not function with all sorts of middleware.
I have, in the past, set up on OSS, using Gimp, Inkscape, Open Office, Various email or gmail, whatever, along with som smaller niche applications successfully. I also got enough skill on those to use them in Windows today too. One can do a lot on OSS, but here is the really hard truth: It is not as good, nor productive of an experience for the vast majority of users and that matters to more of us than I care to admit. It mattered to me.
And I'm good at that kind of thing. Could not match productivity, but I could get close. The difference eats into my time, and I want that time to make money or do projects, have fun...
The same overall thing is often true on a Mac, though there are a ton more cases wher the whole thing ends up par, and that is why I may run a Mac for a while.
For this stuff, I'm going to do a full OSS setup this year. Probably will repurpose that old XP machine, which is a Lenovo, and has great Linux hardware support... but that is on principle, not for some great advantage. Another hard truth.
Paying clients who use something other than Windows.
I just checked my router (Cisco Valet M20) and it has an Internet Access Policy feature that looks like you can control protocols, time slots, and affected computers - very promising!!
I really like Outlook too. I have VBA code which filters my incoming mail and puts in different folders and trashes mail from pesky spammers.
I have it set up so that when I receive a special formatted email message, it will start up or shutdown my FTP server software.
Hello!
Actually no. XP is being officially supported on the 14th of next month. Then all they do deliver will be recent security things. Any old issues won't be fixed.
Now how'd you get VS6 installed on it?