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Upgrading Fading Windows with No Vista

I'm one of those people who has resisted upgrading my computer's Windows operating system to the latest version. However I'm not about to join the legion of people complaining about upgrading to Windows Vista. No I'm years away from that. I'm upgrading from Windows ME to Windows XP. Yes I'm finally leaping into the year 2001 (that's like, nearly a century ago in computer years!).

In my opinion Windows ME was actually the last really good version of Windows. It had all the trouble free plug-and-play functionality of Windows XP without all the gloss and dumbing down bloating that attempted to make finding your way around Windows XP easy for everyone.

I wouldn't even be bothering to upgrade to XP but the thing about old operating systems is, they don't die but they do slowly fade away. By that I mean less and less new software will run on older versions of Windows. For example, the latest version of Internet Explorer won't work on Windows ME (no loss really since I use Firefox). More critically though, there is quite a lot of newer versions of productivity software, that I use, coming out in the fields of graphics, video, music and more that no longer will run on anything older than Windows XP.

The good thing about upgrading to XP this late is that many of the problems new operating systems encounter upon release will have been delt with. Windows XP may not be the best version of Windows but I'm fairly certain its better than Vista right at this moment.

You see new release operating systems don't shine straight away. It takes a few years of polishing before they start to look good. Vista is in that transitional stage where many hardware and software companies are still scrambling to make their products work under Vista (patches anyone?). Meanwhile I've got a good chance that most hardware and software will work fine under XP for quite a few years yet.

Fairly recently Microsoft announced that it will no longer be selling new copies of XP. Which brings me to another good point. I paid just AU$30.00 for my licensed copy of XP on Ebay (and no it isn't a pirated version either). Which is about what I paid for my licensed copy of Windows ME. Buying an operating system at the end of its life cycle is great value for money.

I have used XP and Vista so I do know what I've been missing. This upgrade is for my own personal computer that I use every day. My work horse. The computer that I get to choose what operating system I use with. For a brief second I thought about changing to Linux but that would create far too many issues of non compatibility with my business clients - it would be easier to upgrade to Vista.

So I guess it's thanks Bill, you've finally convinced me Windows XP is the OS for me. Let's see if I can stretch XP longer than seven years past its use by date.
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  1. AnonymousJuly 21, 2008 9:08 PM

    theres something on my blog for you today!!! Swing by when you get a chance!

    ReplyDelete

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