so time to leave Windows XP or not

edited April 2014 in Chit chat
So, I finally decided to buy a SSD and I plan to install it inside my laptop. It is an old laptop, Asus X50N, from 2007, with Nforce 610m, Athlon X2, 2 GB RAM. I hope the BIOS recognizes the SSD and Windows installer does not crash.

I am also thinking about switching to Windows 8.1 instead of XP, because XP was not designed specifically for SSD. Well, I don't know for sure... because from what I read here and there... It is not guaranteed that the old hardware will work under new system... strange since I remember some 10 years ago when I was still using my S3 Trio 64 V2 the new versions of Windows never had any king of problems and already contained all the drivers...

The only thing I can say for sure: my Windows XP SP3 setup works 100% and if there is any driver, software incompatibility in 8.1 I will simply ignore the SSD issues and simply install XP on it...
Post edited by maiki on

Comments

  • edited April 2014
    You might want to try puppy Linux too for a laugh
  • edited April 2014
    Every SSD I have used (a lot) will all work happily with XP. HOWEVER you must manually enable the trim command. (Trim is the SSD equivalent to defrag for a hard disc)(1). Installing it might need a little work but all the companies have good instructions

    It shouldn't be a problem but check that your laptop will take a SATA drive - It should but check.

    If you havent used it I suggest you go into PC world or somewhere similar and have a play with Windows 8.x as there are a lot of people who think it is a bag of poo.(2) Windows 7 might be a better idea and is also very good with drivers.

    1 - Before anybody says so, I know, just trying to keep it simple.
    2 - We have ~9000 machines at work, we are installing Win 7 on them not Win 8, we have 2 Win 8 machines which are just used for *****s and giggles.
  • edited April 2014
    I couldn't get Win8 installed on my older desktop as its apparently a requirement for PAE(Physical Address Extension).
    Win7 went on alright though.
    Win8 seems to work exactly the same as Win7 but with a full screen start menu and other stuff around the periphery which didn't phase me.
    I'm going to have to upgrade the mother in-law soon from XP to Win7 because of the hardware requirements on her older box.
    She finds an issue with *any* change; so I'd upgrade her to 8.1 if I could as it wouldn't be any more problematic as an upgrade to 7 would be.
  • edited April 2014
    ADJB wrote: »
    Every SSD I have used (a lot) will all work happily with XP. HOWEVER you must manually enable the trim command.

    Well, some people say, don't fill the SSDs "manually with zeroes", or you are going to kill it soon. Leave it as it is, it has its own mechanism of self-care. I don't know...
  • edited April 2014
    Because it's so old XP doesn't natively support Trim (which has nothing to do with filling the SSD with zero's) but there are easy fixes from the manufacturers and Microsoft available. You don't have to use the fixes but performance will degrade very badly (and quite quickly) if you don't.
  • edited April 2014
    Run the Windows 7 upgrade advisor. It will show you if most or all drivers are available. I've been doing a lot of XP to 7 upgrades at work for the past few weeks. If a PC meets the minimum requirements and has at least 2GB of ram and the customer doesn't want to replace the computer, I recommend upgrading to 7, not 8.

    A clean installation of 7 also prepares the SSD automatically during installation. The only thing you need to do afterwards is turn off automatic defrag.
  • edited April 2014
    I'm growing up to change my computer together with operating system. I'm not happy about it at all but that's life.

    It served me well, a lot of Spectrum stuff was created on it but now it is 7 years old and almost became retro itself :)

    And I'll certainly be using Windows 7. I hate these tiles ****.
  • edited April 2014
    For someone who's already stuck with Windows 8 and hates it and doesn't want to downgrade to 7, I recommend Classic Shell. It has the options to disable hot corners, skip tiles menu, has XP and 7 skins for the Start Menu and it's free. After that's done you just set most common file types to open with desktop programs instead of Metro apps, install Adobe PDF reader if desired and voila, 8's biggest pains are gone. I've had a lot of people thank me for doing this for them. They said it made their PC usable again. This is only for people who want their Windows 8 to "feel" like 7.
  • edited April 2014
    One good thing. If you stay with XP you wont have to worry about all them annoying updates.

    That's one thing I hate about Windows. Is all that F*cking nagging it does once a week.

    It's especially worse for people like my parents who use their computer only once a week or fortnight. From their perspective it seems for them their computer is always nagging them for this and that when all they want to do its turn it on and use Skype.
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  • fogfog
    edited April 2014
    no xp updates.. sure... but wait till they find exploits are found.. then it'll get trashed

    win 8 was made for tablet owners.. god forbid it would be any good for doing niche things like music making or video stuff etc.. I find it funny they are trying to justify touch screen in music stuff.. to me it's not precise enough yet.. same with mixing.. it's nice to have something tactile still
  • edited April 2014
    fog wrote: »
    no xp updates.. sure... but wait till they find exploits are found.. then it'll get trashed

    win 8 was made for tablet owners.. god forbid it would be any good for doing niche things like music making or video stuff etc.. I find it funny they are trying to justify touch screen in music stuff.. to me it's not precise enough yet.. same with mixing.. it's nice to have something tactile still

    My adobe creative cloud software all works perfectly in 8...
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  • edited April 2014
    I am aware of the Classic Shell and will probably try to install it because the probability I dislike the new Windows looks is very high. As someone who was "forced" to learn Windows 98 and Office 97 years ago, because my ZX Spectrum simply could not run Office I needed for studies in the late 90s, and then naturally has continued to use 2000 and finally XP over the last years.

    As for the automatic OS updates, I always turn them off right after installation and only update manually once a couple of months. In fact I hadn't update my XP for at least 9 months during 2013 till now. The only things that have updates on is my ESET Smart Security and Google Chrome. And it is working well as that.

    The problem is, that they are all getting paranoid, and banks will turn off their online bankings eventually, Google will cease Chrome for XP etc etc.
  • edited April 2014
    maiki wrote: »

    The problem is, that they are all getting paranoid, and banks will turn off their online bankings eventually, Google will cease Chrome for XP etc etc.

    I take it by that you mean that they will all progress? It'd be a bit daft if we were all still using XP in 10yrs.
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  • edited April 2014
    Eventually people will stop releasing new software for XP, it's inevitable. Much like they did with windows 98, DOS, and the ZX Speccy.

    On the other hand, to use a car analogy, just because Ford stopped selling Grenadas you can carry on driving it for as long as you can keep it roadworthy.
  • edited April 2014
    fogartylee wrote: »
    I take it by that you mean that they will all progress? It'd be a bit daft if we were all still using XP in 10yrs.

    It's not progress, its just change.
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • fogfog
    edited April 2014
    fogartylee wrote: »
    My adobe creative cloud software all works perfectly in 8...

    sure it does, but doubt it's as intensive cpu wise as synths like u-he diva or d16's lush101 to name 2 I use .. multiple instances of synths / fx can really give a PC a battering.

    m$ have never really looked at pro audio or video properly to the same extent as say apple.. or else it wouldn't have taken steinberg to come out with the "asio" standard / format for example.
  • edited April 2014
    fog wrote: »
    sure it does, but doubt it's as intensive cpu wise as synths like u-he diva or d16's lush101 to name 2 I use .. multiple instances of synths / fx can really give a PC a battering.

    m$ have never really looked at pro audio or video properly to the same extent as say apple.. or else it wouldn't have taken steinberg to come out with the "asio" standard / format for example.

    I don't know any pro musicians or video editors (or web designers) that would use a PC anyway - for that very reason. Apple have always been better for the creative industry.
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  • edited April 2014
    I decided to become a rebel and stay with XP for another year. The reason: Win 8.1 installer crashes on the very start. Seems like a common problem on this AMD, Nvidia based platform. Will check in a year's time if Bill has something working to offer.

    Also, there are some tutorials on the internet about preparing SSDs for XP. To my current experience, some of them don't work. At least that alligning thing with diskpart. The system won't boot from such partition. So I simply used the built in XP partitioner and it seems to work just fine. Can't be bothered really. It is the task for the SSD manufacturer to take care of low level data management anyway.

    Let's see how it turns out in a couple of months...
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