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XP End of Security Support

02/21/2014 8:23 PM

Your thoughts please. With security support for Windows XP ending April 8, I need to make a change. It appears I have 3 options. Probably others are also interested.

1- Keep XP. But increase my protection by revising owners and administrators setup, plus disconnecting from the Internet whenever possible, especially in the first weeks.

2- Switch to Linux Ubuntu. Word processing and spreadsheet programs are available; my concern is whether others will be able to read what I send and whether I can read what they send.

3- Switch to Windows 7. Apparently this computer, even though it is old, is able to handle Win 7. But there will be some cost for the Win 7 program, an external hard drive to accomplish the changeover, and probably MS Office (or some components.)

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#1

Re: XP end of security support

02/21/2014 8:43 PM

All is not lost,yet.

Windows XP Security Essentials support extended to July 2015 ...


"However, the software giant has changed its mind and have chosen to support Security Essentials until July 14, 2015"

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#2
In reply to #1

Re: XP end of security support

02/21/2014 9:57 PM

I heard it slightly differently: MS would provide paid support to only business users, but not to private users.

Also, MSE is not the same as XP, so does that mean that MSE may be supported, but XP will not; or maybe that only MSE, and not the other virus scanners, will have the updated virus definitions to protect XP? (That would be called marketing or monopoly.) That gives me brain strain.

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#3
In reply to #2

Re: XP end of security support

02/21/2014 10:02 PM

Don't shoot the messenger.

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#4

Re: XP end of security support

02/21/2014 11:37 PM

Moses said "Let my people go"; and they left. Time for a repeat?

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#5

Re: XP end of security support

02/22/2014 12:35 AM

I guess it depends on what you use your computer for....any critical information contained may be at an elevated risk...If no financial info or other critical information is contained on the hard drive, and you can afford to dump and reinstall the os, then I don't see a problem...there are good virus and malware protection software programs available.....

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#6

Re: XP end of security support

02/22/2014 5:01 AM

I just changed from Win2K last month (using winXP now). And I never had any virus scan program installed. My only reason for upgrading was the Tax program, and firefox browser program were no longer supported with a 13 year old OS.

I don't go to weird sites that have a high probability of virus infections, and I've never ever suffered from any infection (home computing since 1997, had been using 98SE till 4 years ago). I also never open emails from people I don't know with attachments.

So now with WinXP, I do have MS essentials running. Slows things down.

Maybe I was just lucky, but I didn't download willi-nilli from the web, without thinking about where it's coming from. And emails never had anything but photo attachments from people I know.

My use of firefox has all Java script and cookies disable for only sites I allow to have this access. And even this site has all the banner adds and what nots disabled.

Historically, old OS's are not what virus makers are attacking.

I can barely stomach win7, and can't find a positive comment about win8.x, so I know that I will have issues, hopefully 10 years out. And by then there may be someone that has a competitive OS that is a real leap forward.

At work they ran win95, then winNT, then winXP, and last year went to win7, which I retired from just as they rolled this out.

Even after MS officially discontinued support for Win2K, they still supported it for several years afterwards. They had too large a corporate usage to piss their bread&butter customers off.

Only you can prevent wild fires.

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#12
In reply to #6

Re: XP end of security support

02/24/2014 8:13 AM

You may be lucky........ and that is all.

You odds may be reduced but that is all, Viruses strike indiscriminately.

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#16
In reply to #12

Re: XP end of security support

02/25/2014 2:33 AM

Doesn't seem like luck to me, just smart choices. I think viruses mainly strike people who click "repair now" whenever a pop up window proclaims "Your registry may contain errors!"

I can't seem to get a virus, even though I have no anti-virus software and have been to many websites and have opened every attachment in unsolicited emails for years. The closest I came to getting a virus, was when one discretely downloaded from a malicious or compromised web site and tried to run in the background . I would have never known about it, if my computer had not asked me what program I wanted to use to run the .exe file.

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#18
In reply to #16

Re: XP end of security support

03/02/2014 8:08 PM

Agree mostly, but things can get much more complicated than that. An OS is EXACTLY as "safe" or "unsafe" as it's designer wants it to be, period. It can be made rock stable, efficient and invulnerable, but then who would buy the next version, just for a few new features? Much less than the current customers for sure, so "programmed obsolescence" was forced here as industry's self defence. The "open source" equivalents seemed to pose a threat to that practice, until it was decided to follow it too. Anyway, my take is that closed source (but nowadays also open source) OS's hidden functionality (...) gives TOO much power to a OS vendor, and I'm not referring to strategies for monopoly, that's the least of my concern. The total control that can be forced on people by all that information gathering, would be a dream come true for people like hitler and stalin. Current "cloud" technology is no better on that area. And just to emphasize my point, I wouldn't trust all that gathered info on "God" itself. S.M.

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#7

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/23/2014 3:35 AM

I'm in a similar situation.

Regarding your option 2, I have tried several Linux versions including Ububtu either as dual-boot options with XP or as external boot-select options on USB connections.

For word processing, spread sheets, presentations and such I find Open Office under Ubuntu does all I want and is 95% interchangeable for people with Win Office so long as you save as Windows' file types.

The issues I have are with Linux printer and scanner drivers which are not so comprehensive either in features or models covered. Next time I buy either piece of hardware I will put 'Linux compatibility' in the decision list first.

There are a few legacy specialized programs written for XP on my machine and I will keep a bootable version of XP on the hard drive just to run these. Can be used off-line if on-line security becomes an problem.

Will be interested in your decision.

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#13
In reply to #7

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/24/2014 9:25 AM

Good reply, although Ubuntu has switched from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice.

Long story short, the sposor for OpenOffice.org changed and the new sugar-daddy wanted to make managerial changes that would have screwed many of the long-term developers, so they left, took the open-source components of OpenOffice.org and made a new development fork, LibreOffice.

And yes, they always called it OpenOffice.org, there was somebody out there who was sitting on the trademark for 'OpenOffice.'

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#14
In reply to #13

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/24/2014 6:18 PM

"Ubuntu has switched from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice." Thanks for the info. I'd noticed LibreOffice modules included with Linux releases and my Win version version of OpenOffice has become Apache OpenOffice 4 (and has some new bugs!).

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#17
In reply to #14

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/26/2014 3:10 PM

Ah yeah, that was the detail I was missing, Apache had purchased OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems, and as OpenOffice was being used as the 'test bed' for SunOffice features while under Sun Microsystems, there were a number of Sun employees in high positions within the OpenOffice team. Apache wanted everyone who was connected with Sun to resign from the project, I'm assuming because they were worried about the Sun employees stealing apache secrets or something.

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#8

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/23/2014 6:30 AM

Security support is nearly all relating to new malicious exploits of the operating system. So many patches have already been done and will not magically all go away without continued support. The bigger issue is if the software you use will continue to be supported by the older operating system. The security issues can be largely covered by using additional security software such as firewalls, anti-malware, anti-virus and regular system cleaning and monitoring tools. I am a BIG fan of sand box software. I get hit daily with malicious code of one sort or another and none, as of yet, has been able to break out of the sandbox and cause any damage or violate my security or privacy.

I don't understand the anti win7 sentiments still being so pervasive. I made the change some years back and have been very pleased. There are settings for running older software but nearly everything runs ok without having to use them. And the ability of the 64bit versions to run 32bit software flawlessly is also a plus. None of the OS are perfect, and invariably you will have a piece or equipment that doesn't get a supported driver update, but do the research and many times someone will have a work around or a proper driver. But you can have good security with XP if you need to stay with it. Just explore the plethora of after market security software available.

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#9

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/23/2014 4:25 PM

1. Might as well keep the XP computer intact, because even if you switch to Linux or Windows 7, you occasionally will need to run a program, or access a file type, that is already on that computer and invariably the best tool to have when working on a computer is another computer. A KVM switch might be a good way to keep the older XP machine handy.

Both Win 7 and Ubuntu are available in 64 bit operating systems. You might consider using the money you would spend on Microsoft licenses to buy hardware to build a new system. Install Linux for about $15 (to have the DVD's shipped). If you still want Window 7, you can install it later as a virtual machine on your new Linux computer.

2. Try Debian, this version of Linux is dedicated to open source licensing of the operating system and the 28,857 packages available in Debian's software repository. Ubuntu is built on Debian, but is not as strict on proprietary software. Both are good.

Microsoft has no interest in compatibility. There is no profit in it. They don't play well with others. Filling out PDF forms, Flash player (critical for Battle Pirates), and formatting in office documents, are going to be issues when using Linux. (Please note: if a perfectly good file cannot be read by a Window machine it will be deemed the fault of the Linux machine.)

3. Windows 7, hmm, it might run today but after a few years of "updates"? Look at what happened with XP. The license will be tied to the hardware, so it may not be the best investment to install it on older hardware electrolytic capacitors.

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#10

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/24/2014 5:29 AM

I have 3 versions of windows running...the one that seems to have least problems and causes least rise in blood pressure is vista....7 will not post 'emoticons', 8.1 same problem, 8.1 also jumps through crap I don't ask it to, am thinking about taking it back.

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#19
In reply to #10

Re: XP End of Security Support

03/03/2014 3:42 PM

I'm also running Vista, Win 7 and 8.1 I actually prefer 8.1 over Win 7 and Vista. Vista does some weird things. For instance, my email will freeze for 15-20 seconds. Also, I've had my Firefox freeze as well. This occurs when there is still a lot of free memory and CPU.

Win 7 is on our laptop and I like it, yet I also get frozen screens - though not as often as with Vista.

We have 8.1 on the system we bought last year. It feels much faster and I like it a lot better than 8.0. I do get stuck in some programs (no X to close it), so I move the mouse to the top left corner to go to another program, change to a different window, then go back to the top left corner and close the program. The program that comes to mind is the picture viewer.

I recommend that you try using 8.1 more and I think you'll like the features and the ease of use. It requires a paradigm shift in Microsoft operating systems.

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#20
In reply to #19

Re: XP End of Security Support

03/03/2014 5:22 PM

You're right, it is becoming less cumbersome, I guess I'll get a copy of '8.1 for complete idiots'. Things I get PO'd about are high, medium, low for sensitivity of devices....move the cursor to the lower right corner to scroll and if you stop long enough to read something the function goes away, scroll across 'pushed' crap and jump to another page, all the little features. I used to use a program 'Wordstar', and a menuless program that did the same thing in 30k program space, at 85wpm plus, and I've been disappointed ever since. I don't need a GUI that thinks it knows what I want to do.

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#21
In reply to #20

Re: XP End of Security Support

03/03/2014 6:42 PM

Back in the late 80's, I used Wordstar and actually liked it. Much of my office was using Wordperfect - a program I didn't like, because of those crazy f keys.

I think you'll like Win 8.1 - when I use this program and I go back to Win 7 or Vista, they feel old and outdated.

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#11

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/24/2014 7:00 AM

Just switch to win7..

You will see that it is much easy to work with. I don't understand the point at resisting to technology..

"I can't stomach to win 7"

Well... Seems that you love counting pixels and find it beautiful to have only few colors on your computer :(

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#15
In reply to #11

Re: XP End of Security Support

02/25/2014 1:01 AM

Not sure what you mean, 16.7 million colors can hardly be considered a few, and with 1680 x 1050 resolution, I have no interest counting pixels. Microsoft does not exclusively own high definition, color graphics, except, of course, the blue screen.

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