OS upgrades

I'm not talking about on new computers. I have 10 running on several old laptops and even a N370 ATOM netbook.- All of them run BIOS. I also have one UEFI computer that came with Win 7 and upgraded to W10. This one is on 64 bit.. Both 32 and 64 bit boot fast and run fasat (as fast as ANYTHING can run on an ATOM) On the Atom I am definitely memory limited with only 1GB - can only run one program at a time. The BIG surprise is not how well it runs, but that it runs at all!!

As far as UEFI and BIOS, you can't switch between them. I have not set the same machine up with 2 different drives, one UEFI and one BIOS with Win 10, but I have with Win 7 - I didn't notice much if any difference.

Win 7 is okay. I run that on two of my boxes at work and my laptop. Theoretically it's on my home desktop but by default that one boots into SuSE and stays there. The IT department wanted to replace my XP box and I told them it would be over my dead body. If I'm lucky it takes three days to set up a development machine and get into a useful state.

BASIC was Gates' revenge on the world...

It depends... I'm developing a map product using the ESRI Javascript API and it won't go on XP's Firefox. The OpenGL calls just aren't there. It might be the underlying hardware but it hasn't worked on any XP box we tested.

Many websites still do work but I'm thinking the move to HTML5 rather than Flash (cursed be thy name) will create more problems for XP browsers.

I've never compared or tested so I cannot say. I would IMMAGINE fast-boot would boot faster - - - However, you CAN run Win7 (64 bit only - not 32) on UEFI - it is only required by Microsoft for OEMs on

To install Win7 64 on UEFI, you need to boot from UEFI CD/DVD.

Also, according to Tomshardware.com, fast-boot is basically a hybrid hibernate mode, - and on a lot of desktop systems in particular, it is buggy (my experience - not Tom's). I turn hibernate off as a matter of course on all desktops, and on a lot of laptops as well - solves a lot of lockup and reboot problems.

IDK of any browser company that is still doing updates of any browsers for XP. And each month, what's left gets further and further away from working with websites that are updated. I have an old notebook that I keep as a spare, it has XP on it and I put Pale Moon on it, that was the last one I know of that was still supported and they ended support for it last year too.

Another example.

Like others have said, before buying a new CPU, memory, etc, I'd look at what a used PC goes for on Ebay. He also said he was going to update the BIOS. Unless I was having a problem or needed to do it for some particular reason, I would not screw with that either. IMO, it's very unlikely to make a performance difference.

So is Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft already dropped support for any previous versions over a year ago. Switching to IE at this point as part of his upgrade strategy is just going from a dead horse to a dying horse. Firefox on XP is in the same boat, they are ending support too. His problem isn't a browser, it's that XP is obsolete and over and to be investing in upgrading an XP system doesn't make sense to me at this point.

I believe Virtual PC on Win7 Professional, running XP, can run just about anything that requires DOS in the backround.

Heh. He stole it too.

I wasn't trying to push linux on him, but if he thinks he's just going to load 64bit Windows XP and everything is gravy, he might be in for a very rude awakening. Serious lack of drivers, for starters. If he's happy with XP and his wife just does general stuff then my suggestion will give him the most bang for his hardware buck, with little if/any retraining required by him. Not to mention, saving cash.

That's actually a driver issue. Rather, lack of support in XP to do it.

I don't have flash installed on this machine. It parses HTML5 just fine, so far. Plays video from youtube, wimp, etc. no issues.

You're only delaying the inevitable going to Windows 7 from XP.

Support lifecycle

Microsoft ended the sale of new retail copies of Windows 7 in October

Umm.. Yes, you can in many cases. Generally speaking, UEFI capable computers do offer 'legacy mode' Er, what you used to call the BIOS. [g]

With regard to ansi.sys, say what? Are you BBSing or something? Running a doorgame? I don't know of many apps outside of that (aside from your own colorful menus or something) that even used it.

That's not er, odd, really. It's EMULATED though. Has been for a long long time.

No, you aren't, either.

You can run dosbox to load freedos, or an actual version of DOS under it, and get ansi.sys that way. A bit of a pain, but, it's possible to do.

Yep.

Only if your needs change significantly. The thing I notice having Flash turned off and running an old browser is I see far fewer ads. I just see "advertisement" and a blank space.

I keep a thumb drive with DOS 6.3 around here just for those times when I really want to run a DOS environment but most of the time DOSBox does a pretty good job. I still have plenty of DOS tools that run seemlessly in regular XP. CE3 an subset of the IBM "E" text editor is very powerful if you are manipulating text and it runs under XP.

A lot of people may be confusing firmware type (BIOS, UEFI) with disk structure (MBR, GPT).

As to another limitation, nearly all modern Intel-compatible CPUs allow access to 64GB RAM in 32-bit mode. It's 32-bit Windows that REFUSES to use more than about 3.5GB. I've heard of people fixing that, but it isn't easy.

BTW, I have used 32-bit Linux on a system with 32GB RAM, and it recognized it all.

If younare using it as an industrial controller or just reading e-mail, XP is fine (Heck, windows98 will do the job) but if you want to do anything on the net, or run any new software, it's more grief than it's worth - as much as I liked XP and stuck with it WAY too long.