Well, one thing we don't know is how tenacious some XP advocates are. Speculation on my part, but perhaps another Mark Russinovich (blackviper.com in it's day) will show up and attempt to keep XP safe and current. I loved that site, before M$ got their hands on it. And yes, if you know who I'm talking about, you're probably a crusty old f**t like myself.
browsed all through this thread. the reasons; xp is a perfectly good os.. it runs a lot of software that would otherwise give trouble, trouble-free as posters have pointed out.so long as you use the old brain when browsing, it can keep running for years. [you can use dillo instead..] but.. most of all, the m$ marketing is fast turning into a propaganda machine.. no day passes, or some obscure company announces to inform xp users of end of support, etc.. i bet m$ pays them.. irritation follows automatically.. they want to sell licences.. wel, xp is so old by now that everyone can get an almost free copy, even those who cannot afford m$ licences, on older machines.. my conclusion, duck the w8 marketing machine, and run it on a reliable browser.. just my two cents, not over conservative, i prefer w7..
I have 3 PCs and one netbook running on XP SP3 and not all of them will be used for surfing the net. I don't worry about that because I have several more PCs running 5 different versions of Windows. *shrugs*
For those of you still wanting to keep and use Windows XP on the internet... you can: Install the latest updates (everything released by Microsoft and leading up to 4/8/2014) Install the best anti-virus/internet security tool, and be really careful in what you download, and ensure you run the latest versions of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. The problem with keeping Windows XP is this: No matter how good the anti-virus/internet security is, it will still allow the operating system's built-in processes, services and applications to have access to the internet (unless you configure it not to), and the computer programmers who behave in a rogue manner aka "Black Hat Hackers" always find little tiny fractures/weaknesses in those processes, services and applications, and they write program code (a software exploit) to take advantage and allow them to gain root (Administrator) level access to those computers. This issue has been around since computers have been connected to the internet, what allows people to cope with that fact is, Microsoft, Apple, the Linux community, and other UNIX and UNIX-like vendors, always release patches and updates for their operating systems when they discover or are notified or an exploit in their OS. When Microsoft no longer releases fixes/updates, there will be a lot of hackers who are going to have a lot of fun penetrating and controlling these soon-to-be defenseless systems.
I have installed today (in VMware) a fresh copy of XP Professional SP3 that will replace the prior one. It will be (mainly) dedicated to virtualize and keep alive a few old educational software. So I'll be running XP for the years to come, or at least until I manage to "extend the support" for these good old apps and make sure they run in Windows 9. But I guess that from now on I'll be unticking more and more frequently the "connected" option at VMware.
that's exactly what I do, I never power on the VM with XP until I have to use something that might require a connection, and really never have to because most things can be transferred from host to guest without a problem.
I just made a fresh Windows XP installation on an old laptop, replacing Windows 95. It has much too few RAM for Windows 7. It took me many hours to find all the drivers (no XP drivers from manufacturer). I'm happy with XP now, it's more or less fast enough. I'm very sad about "End of Support". I have seen "Windows XP Embedded POSReady 2009" on Wiki, could it be an alternative for vintage laptops?
I'm about to install XP x64 on my 5 year old laptop, which is now showing it's age. It just sometimes slow when running 7, and it's running on a SSD, plus the laptop cannot support more than 2GB! So it's to become my secondary computer, and my primary machine will be my desktop which at the moment has 8GB of ram, and will run Win7 SP1 Ultimate x64. As for EOL for XP, yes it's a risk, but I believe that MS is just trying to scare it's users into upgrading to 8.1, plus I'll run AVG Free 2014, change my web browser to Firefox and disable IE8. As for firewall, my internet hub has a built-in hardware firewall, so I should be safe.