| Also note that you don't buy POSReady directly from Macro$haft - it's | provided directly only to OEM equipment makers. But images of the OS | have leaked out to the public. |
That's a whole other issue. You're talking about using an illegal product. On top of that you want to let it call home to MS for updates? I expect you'd probably get away with it, but just to be on the safe side, I don't think I'd call the police to ask about the best route out of town if I'd just robbed a bank. :)
| So for those of you that claim the two OS's could or are likely to | contain key incompatibilities at the file level regarding future updates | and patches - there is really nothing to back up such a hypothesis.
I'm questioning whether there's any value at all in the potential for updates. There won't be any more updates for IE8, so what patches do you really need? XP Embedded may not even have standard networking functionality, in which case you wouldn't get anything like that. In other words, you won't know what you might be missing. Yet you're risking XP stability.
There's no way to be sure what compatibility issues there could be. That's why Microsoft defines supported vs non-supported. They promise to maintain supported items. Not so with unsupported items. They could break compatibility simply out of spite, to thwart people trying to use this hack. Similar things have happened with programmer functions. Microsoft guarantees that supported functions will work, but unofficial functions, Registry settings, etc -- that MS uses but doesn't officially offer to 3rd-party programmers
-- often get changed willy nilly. No one can complain because MS specifically didn't list those functions and settings as supported.
In any case, suit yourself. I'm just warning anyone who might want to use this hack that they're taking a chance with dubious benefit. Personally I wouldn't allow Windows Update to function, anyway. I'm running XP SP3. If they came out with SP4 I'd install it only after it had been out for awhile. If you're worried about security on XP then *don't use IE*. Beyond that, disable script if possible, and if at all feasible, do not install Adobe Acrobat, Java, Flash, or Silverlight. Script is connected with nearly all online risks. Many depend on one of things I listed above. None of those things is necessary for most people. Flash is used mostly for animated ads. Java is usually only used on corporate intranets. Silverlight is a failed attempt by Microsoft to create a highly functional, interactive webpage functionality. Like Adobe AIR it's been pretty much supplanted by high-efficiency javascript. Adobe Acrobat is a bloated mess. There are other, more lean PDF readers, and you don't need to use PDF browser plugins. (See Sumatra, PDF-Exchange Viewer.)
For optimal protection you might try Firefox with the NoScript extension, which allows you to enable script easily and only when it's absolutely necessary. With that you'll be far safer than the average Win7 user, and you won't have to risk your system to Microsoft's beta dripfeed for another OS.
For further protection, curtail your online shopping. EBay just got hacked the other day. That's a good example of new risks. It used to be one had to worry about wiseguys attacking with malware and ruining one's computer. Then the risk became Russian and Chinese criminals, installing sneaky malware that spies to get credit card numbers or other exploitable information. Now, increasingly, the risk is in electronic transactions themselves: online shopping, buying gas with credit cards or debit cards at hacked gas pumps, using hacked ATMs, buying groceries at stores with hacked card-swipe appliances, etc. If you don't do anything on your computer that requires you to type a charge card or bank account number then you'll improve your security a great deal just through that. But of course, that's not acceptable for many people. If you're an Amazon addict or EBay denizen you can't afford such risks. Though everyone can at least avoid online banking.