Mixture
In yesterday's podcast for a well known PC Magazine - the hoary chestnut of third party patches for the commonly used old XP Operating System - Read China ! came up as a proposition (I will confirm this - I need to listen again though).
XP's biggest limitation is its Memory address handling.
Microsoft could, if they had so wished, implemented 32 bit physical address extension. As supported by AMD & Intel on the Pentium Pro since mid the nineties.
Microsoft as a conventional profit orientated company (nothing wrong with that) chose the Win 7 & Win 8 route to "encourage" users en masse to purchase more kit.
Big problem - For many, functionality, familiarity and about good enough wins.
There are more XP - SP3 PC's around that Win 8 machines although this is changing.
Now the bad news for the PC tech brigade (me included) is that many users will make do with what they have for economic reasons.
A sensible route: but not the most profitable for MS is to continue to patch the Operating System for all until the XP user base is shrunk by inevitable attrition - say for three years. The working life for a traditional PC what ? 5 -6 years - I make them last longer.
If people think that the user base running XP are going to cease to run them on the internet after April 2014 are frankly deluded.
Many people just do not have the funds to buy the latest Tablets - The older PC's will be replaced in part by smart phone type devices in time.
Microsoft have set the deadline in their own interests - Come on folks I bet that the internal Patch infrastructure team, devoted XP; is only a small part of that allocated to Win 7, 8 and the Server products.
(This was typed on a system consisting of a: 2008 Advent Motherboard & case + Blu Ray DVD, Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz × 4 - 6 Gigs of old ddr2 -400 Ram: purchased for £70.00 - I've added a Power supply and a Seagate 1/2 TB Sata - £48.00 inc VAT. Running Ubuntu 12.04. Cobbled together on Monday last.)
Last edited by Guest 112233; 31st October 2013 at 07:57.