Windows XP EOL and Windows 8.1

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Renegade

Renegade

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So now that 8th April is long gone how many of you are still on windows XP at home or at office. What are the plans to move on, win 7 or win 8, and when? If you are planning to stay back then what are the reasons?

Despite all the hate that has been around Win 8, I think it has come a long way with 8.1 and is a very good OS to use. Though I admit I have not used it on a touch or hybrid device (touch and keyboard) which it is designed for. I use it on my Dell laptop and run straight to desktop mode. What I am most impressed about is the boot time and time to restore from sleep, lift the lid and its ready.
 
In my office it has been instructed that if anyone's desktop or laptop has XP then they need to get it upgraded.
At home I have a laptop which has xp but I don't care about it much so I am OK with the xp on it.
 
At home,

I m still running Windows 7 on desktop and satisfied with it. On HP laptop, which my bro uses, Windows 8.1 is running. I do not use that laptop much however I hate Metro Start Menu. Like say if I have installed iTunes, entries will be iTunes app itself and a help/support file. In Windows 7 it is in folder which is neat IMO but in Windows 8 I get both the entries without any folder which looks cluttered to me. On side note I too like boot time of Windows 8. On first gen i3 with 4GB RAM and OCZ Vertex 4 SSD, it is hardly 8-10 seconds.

At office

Right now running Windows XP but have logged ticket for upgrade to Windows 7 as per instructions. I use desktop at office.
 
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I have one Win XP laptop which dad uses.. rest all are on Windows 7. Dad uses the laptop for Word / Excel etc.. no support expected from MS for that :P
 
djmykey said:
I have one Win XP laptop which dad uses.. rest all are on Windows 7. Dad uses the laptop for Word / Excel etc.. no support expected from MS for that :p
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To be honest I doubt that our home laptops and desktops, esp the ones being used for casual stuff have much to worry about vulnerabilities until the Antivirus and Firewall are up to date. That too is only needed if you are browsing websites carelessly.

I believe the only ones stuck on WinXP at office would be the ones running some in-house developed applications which would not work on later versions of Windows.[DOUBLEPOST=1398705686][/DOUBLEPOST]A new vulnerability has been discovered for all versions of Internet Explorer from 6 to 11. When you visit a malicious website your vulnerable browser can be hacked immediately. Such attacks have been named "drive-by".

You can of course use Chrome or Firefox instead as they will be supported on XP.
 
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Have tried Win 8 from its preview days (guess working for a company which is MS Gold Partner has it perks :p) the Metro UI was a total let down, even after lot of crashes & BSOD's i stayed on ...but when i found that my HD4870 only works on WDDM V1.1 moved back to Win 7 Home premium. since then am happily divorced to Win 8 :yuck: .
 
I have been using Windows 8.1 from September last year (used win 8 before that) along with the latest Win 8.1 Update 1, I am happy with the performance. The latest Update 1 allows you to easily minimize , launch and close Metro Apps directly from the Desktop which is a good addition.
 
We are using XP for some machines now till we get them upgraded as most of them are running on 1GB RAM. All new machines are G2020+H61+4GB combos running Windows 7 (but sadly, 32bit :facepalm: ). Complete migration should take about 9 months.

As for Windows 8 - I think its best avoided for workplaces as of now. Stick to 7, and there won't be much in the way of issues.
 
I use Windows 8 at office only coz I need to manage Hyper V servers and the Hyper V mmc on Windows 7 cannot manager Windows 2012 R2 Hyper V features properly.
Its bearable.. but not good.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
As for Windows 8 - I think its best avoided for workplaces as of now. Stick to 7, and there won't be much in the way of issues.
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The biggest problem of using Win8 at the workplace would be handling the people. Unless you configure the computer to boot directly to desktop there is going to be a lot of confusion.

I still remember when I upgraded my desktop to Windows XP and my dad flipped out as he could not find the My Computer icon.
 
Er that is one of the many problems of 8. One of the weirdest problems I faced while I used 8 was random unknown crashes after the os updated some new patches. This has happened to lot of people all over the web too. Windows will update through windows update and run fine for few hours. Then suddenly it will crash and go into a boot loop where it will try to restore pc for hours and only show a blank screen to user. I actually saw a sad face smiley on screen once and windows gave me message to reinstall the os from scratch since it couldn't repair the pc. :mad:
 
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Renegade said:
The biggest problem of using Win8 at the workplace would be handling the people. Unless you configure the computer to boot directly to desktop there is going to be a lot of confusion.

I still remember when I upgraded my desktop to Windows XP and my dad flipped out as he could not find the My Computer icon.
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We are facing driver issues and computer slowdowns + computer freezing. That issue of different icons & etc - I was going to get Start8 or one of those equivalent programs. Most of the guys have used Windows 7 - infact, the joke is that one chap was saying that he wanted an upgrade to Windows 8 since he has 8 at home. I just told him that I have 8.1, and I wanted to go back to 7 - that made him shut up.
 
6pack said:
Er that is one of the many problems of 8. One of the weirdest problems I faced while I used 8 was random unknown crashes after the os updated some new patches. This has happened to lot of people all over the web too. Windows will update through windows update and run fine for few hours. Then suddenly it will crash and go into a boot loop where it will try to restore pc for hours and only show a blank screen to user. I actually saw a sad face smiley on screen once and windows gave me message to reinstall the os from scratch since it couldn't repair the pc. :mad:
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I was gonna format my laptop to install Win 8.1 :( Windows 7 freezes randomly.. so much that no event is logged or anything. The laptop doesn't heat up or anything. Just freezes up
 
6pack said:
The only time events are not logged during crashes are, if power goes off or its a memory error.
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Well it was a *cough cough* edition.. so formatted it and installed Win8.1. Hoping this doesn't act similar. So far so good.
 
Have been using Win 8.1 for close to 3 months now and it is working without a fuss. Migrated from Win 7 and haven't regretted it. Initially, the OS did enter bootloops much to my chagrin but I soon found out that the AV (BitDefender) was causing issues. So uninstalled it and everything has been fine. Boot up times are under 10 seconds while shutting down takes not more than 3-5 seconds. Of course, an SSD helps matters.

People worried about the absence of the start button should install 'Classic Shell' on their machines. You can directly boot to the desktop and there's nary a difference in the UI when compared to Win 7. Overall, thoroughly satisfied with the OS.
 
Been using both 8 and 8.1 from the day each was launched (on three different PCs) and never had a problem with any. One is a very basic system with 2GB Ram and a dual core processor and has been running windows 8 legit (windows 7, cough cough version before that) and it is still doing swimmingly. If anything, I found W8 performing distinctly better than W7.

The other two systems are fairly robust in terms of RAM (12GB and 16GB) with decent processors and they are extremely snappy. Definitely better than W7. Have no regrets moving over from W7.

A few guys from office (where I have the low spec system) were not really happy with the start menu and all that, so I installed Classic Shell and they couldn't be happier. Even the tech illiterates said the system was performing a lot better.

All of the installs were clean installs and of the 64bit variety.
 
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