Win 7 or XP?

[Newgene McMensa]

Is Win 7 any easier to use than 8.1? If the way you interface is more like 8.1 than XP, then I will install XP on it. ` Snuffy

[Ed Pawlowski]

Anything is better than 8.1 IMO. I'd go with W7. I find it a bit better than XP. W10 is not so bad either.

[Al Dente]

If ease of use is your goal, consider Microsoft Bob Desktop running on Windows for Workgroups 3.11

My next choice would be Windows 10.

[Anonymoud]

replying to Newgene McMensa, Anonymoud wrote: If you are used to XP you will prefer win7 over Win8. They do share a lot of similarities. Even Win8 isn't terrible if you install Classic Shell on it. I would not recommend XP for anything these days, no matter how much you like the interface. As an unsupported OS that is no longer receiving security patches it is prone to security issues. Also there are more and more programs that will not run on it including the latest versions of certain web browsers. It will only cause you trouble.

[trader_4]

I've used XP, then Win 7, and now 10. NEver used 8, but 7 is very similar user interface to XP. Win 10 is a bit different, but not as different as I feared based on some reviews and quick looks at it at stores. Given the choice and support level, between XP and 7, I'd go with 7. Win 10 is by far the best, most stable MSFT OS IMO.

[Terry Coombs]

7 is a lot like Vista , I personally prefer XP Pro ... I have no experiencewith anything newer but I hear 10 invades your privacy significantly - and by default puts all your stuff in the cloud . I prefer to store my stuff right here at home .

[Ed Pawlowski]

You just have to watch the setup. Nothing of mine goes to the cloud, never did, never will.

[philo]

Although I've been a Linux user since about the year 2000 I still support Windows machines ...at one time on a daily basis.

XP was a great OS in it's day but is no longer supported. If you have a new machine you will not find drivers for the hardware and aside from lack of new MS security updates, you will not have much luck finding a up to date and secure web browser for it.

If my choice were between Win8.1 and Win7 I'd probably go with Win8.1 simply because it will be supported longer. Then I'd get the free utility Classic Shell

Classic Shell will return the standard Win7 GUI to you. I've installed it on a lot of machine where the user could not deal with Win8 and as far as they are concerned , it's just the same as Win7

[clare]

Seven is the sweet spot. Seven can be configured to behave like XP. Don't waste time installing XP any more too much new stuff, including internet content, is incompatible with XP.

[clare]

7 pro if you have a choice.

[clare]

As long as you don't need internet access. 7 or 10 - forget anything in between - and except for special apps forget XP - and regardless, forget anything earlier.

[clare]

When installing 10, use"custom" install and turn off everything you can turn off. Default settings allow sharing on the cloud, but default to local storage.

[trader_4]

I think you can extend that to almost all the latest web browsers, certainly all the popular ones, the latest, updated versions won't run on XP anymore. So how much that matters from a compatibility and security standpoint depends on if you're using a browser with XP or not.

[clare]

Vista (like Millenium Edition - ME) was an abortion.XP, 7, or 10 were solid.

[trader_4]

I don't know that you can say that nothing goes to the cloud. Search queries using Edge for example? You can't stop the cloud from seeing what you want to search for, and maybe not from using it for their own purposes either. But if you mean your typical saved word files, excel stuff, that doesn't automatically go to the cloud on Win 10, AFAIK anyway.

But I did what you did, control the setup and disable anything I didn't want from going. But, all said, whatever goes on with Win 10, from a security standpoint, is no worse than what goes on with a smartphone. Don't know about anyone else, but I do just as much stuff on a phone as I do on a PC these days.

I'm very happy with Win 10, by far the best OS they've produced yet. The one weak spot is the Edge browser sucks, it can't manage bookmarks, for example. But I tried it for a few days, then quickly went to Chrome.

[Diesel]

What do you mean as long as you don't need internet access? Windows

3.x was capable of surfing the internet, running gopher, ftp client/servers, irc client/servers, etc. hell, at one point, I even ran a web server on windows 3.1. Trumpet winsock provided the tcpip stack for it to work via PPP over a dialup modem, but, I could have also used the network card present in the machine had I access to a cat5 cable at the time. I nuked a pile of windows 9x machines from my lowly little windows 3.1 box, too. It was immune to OOB, but, it could easily send one to a vulnerable box.

Why forget XP? Is it security concerns or lack of upcoming software/driver support? If the latter, I can understand your position, if the former, I'd say you've been drinking a lot of scare mongering MS based koolaid. XP hasn't magically opened the barn door and let all the horses out just because MS no longer supports it.

Due to the telemetry present in Windows 10, given the choice, I'd recommend Windows 7; it doesn't presently spy on you as much and, you don't have to jump thru hoops to remove 'default' apps.

[Diesel]

I'm glad you stated IMO with your Windows 10 comment, Trader. :) Much easier to defend an opinion without facts.

[Diesel]

The driver issue with a new machine may/may not be entirely true. There's atleast two huge (won't even fit on a dual layer dvd) programs that are massive driver collections. Most of the time, so far, they are able to find drivers for XP to allow a recent hardware build to roll with it.

I'd stick with Windows 7 given the limited choice described above. Windows 8.x is terrible.

Well, for the most part, yes. It's not quite the same thing as the real GUI, though.

With a few minor differences, yes. I use classic shell for clients as well to force their windows 8.x machines to look/feel more like the ones they are accustomed to.

[Diesel]

I'm using the latest firefox ESR build on Windows XP. it still gets updates and will continue to do so for awhile longer. The fact MS dropped support didn't automatically make XP a big target/super vulnerable, the world is going to end tomorrow scenario come true, either.

The real issue with XP is upcoming lack of drivers for the latest hardware. And, more apps no longer supporting it- many of which are intentional on the part of the author and have nothing to do with the codebase of XP itself. In other words, a lot of the apps that no longer support XP aren't using api calls that XP doesn't have, it's a personal decision on the part of the author to stop supporting the OS, it's not mandatory in many cases. Only in a select few is the authors programs new features calling apis that XP doesn't support.

Otherwise, it's lazy programmers who just don't want to deal with XP users anymore. In fact, some actually had to add more code to detect XP vs another NT based OS and refuse to run if it's detected. Not because XP couldn't run the code mind you, but, because the author decided they didn't want their program running on XP anymore.

It actually reminds me of some of the DOS programs available from yesteryear that were processor biased. They'd ask the CPU to identify itself, and if it was amd/cyrix, they'd refuse to run claiming only Intel could properly support their code. In rare asm demo cases this was actually true, otherwise, it was the author forcing his/her own personal views on you that aren't based on fact.

[Diesel]

List a security issue that's known for XP and isn't patched which could be a security risk for XP users.

Sadly, for the most part, that's the authors personal lazy choice. Aside from a few API calls which are new/altered, there's no real reason to deliberately force your binary not to run under Windows XP.