Microsoft Windows XP

We liked XP !  It was stable and worked just fine for us.  You have heard the ole' saying, "Don't fix, what ain't broke !"  It is estimated that one billion copies of XP were sold !  With the software pirates, maybe 2 billion copies got used.  18 % of the computer world is still using XP.  WOW.  Evidently, it was a great product and we are glad that we bought it !

But, we also understand that it was getting old, first coming out in 2001.  It was time for Microsoft to move along.  Fine.  So Microsoft gave it an end in 2014.

But at RE:, we are probably keeping our Windows XP Professional around until it is totally & completely dead !  R.I.P.

Why ?  First.  Because Microsoft hasn't given us a good enough reason to buy one of their so called, "upgraded", OS products.  Most of what has come before and after XP, in a word -- SUCK !

ME -- Sucked !  ( pre-XP )

Vista -- Super Sucked !
7 -- OK.  Maybe it isn't horrible.  But RE: didn't get excited enough to buy it.
8 -- Sucks !
8.1 -- Improving, but we still aren't fans.

We have been using Windows since it's inception, and we haven't been very impressed for over a decade now.

Second.  We haven't drank the doom & gloom Kool-Aid.  Windows XP reached it's end of life on 8 April 2014.  That doesn't mean that it will suddenly stop working.  Microsoft just isn't going to be providing updates and security patches for it any more.  Guess what ?  RE: isn't scared !

As a former Architect and Realtor, I'll use a house as an annology.  One builds a sturdy house.  Their family lives in it for 50 years.  The homeowner provided regular maintenance to the house over those years.  But now that family moves out and no one buys the house and it becomes vacant.  It doesn't suddenly fall down !  It sits around for another 20 years, eventually becomes an eyesore and eventually falls down.  XP is like that house.

Third.  When the house becomes vacant, the neighbors will take care of it for a little while.  They will maybe mow the lawn once in a while.  They will make sure the neighborhood kids don't throw rocks and break things.  The community doesn't want it to become an eyesore.  Eventually that also will cease, but not right away.

The anti-virus community -- AVG, Norton, McAfee, etc. -- will take care of XP for a while.  I'll be keeping my firewall turned on and my anit-virus current and scanning.  I figure that XP still has a few good years in her left.

The Options

Sooo .... what are the eventual alternatives ?  Purchase Windows 7.  Or better yet, maybe Microsoft will release an OS product that we can get excited about.  We aren't holding our breath.

Apple.  We have never owned an Apple product.  We never drank the iWhatever Kool-Aid either.

Linux

As long as we are forced to be open to the possibility of trying something new, why not Linux ?  We learn new things at RE: all of the time.

We are all about Open Source here at RE:.  We already use mostly open source software for most of what we do here in the Internet world.  Joomla!, WordPress, GIMP, Scribus, Bluefish, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, etc.  The software is FREE !  The stuff we use, works great !

So we have started into the foray and have dual installed Fedora 20 along side of XP and are starting to become familiar with it.  We will try to let you know in a few months, how we are doing with it.  Did we tell you that Fedora was also FREE !

I mean really.  Haven't we all given Microsoft enough of our money anyway ?  Is there a possibility of life without Microsoft ?  We certainly think there is and we are not alone in this thinking !

Perpetual XP

How can we keep XP alive until we don't need it anymore ?  We bought Windows XP Professional SP2 some time ago.  We have that OEM disk, it's license and Microsoft can't take that away from us !

We downloaded an executable for SP3 to our server.  We can install them both anytime that we need to.  We have Windows on it's own partition that we can re-write whenever necessary.

And Microsoft isn't taking down their existing updates to XP anytime soon that we have heard.  Just go to Windows Update and crank through the patches, just like we always have.

If our XP gets corrupted or infected -- we will just re-install it -- we have done it many times before.  As long as we keep our anti-virus up to snuff, this shouldn't happen anytime soon.

Our Plan

We are learning Linux and are going away from Microsoft, for good, as soon as possible.  We have already successfully weaned ourselves off of Microsoft Office, and we shall do the same with Microsoft Windows !

If we find that this is the way to go for us, we will share what we did, hopefully, step by step, so you may do the same if you wish.  Stay tuned ....