I haven't been to a single airport in the last 6 months over 35 of them which isn't using XP on checkin and gate dispatch also for flight status.

And yes they are all linked to the internet because they use terminal windows to get onto the various databases for check in, load control etc.

How many times do I have to repeat myself ?!? :ugh:

DO NOT compare yourself and your home PC with a large corporation with a large IT department that know what they are doing.

You don't know doodly squat about their network and you don't know doodly squat about their Windows 7/8 migration plans (which I can pretty much assure you they are almost certainly undertaking).

Just stop clinging on to XP.... there is no excuse for home users or small businesses to stay there.

Actually I do because I have to get our company link working on them all so have spoken to the IT boys to get it working. Along with the pilot briefing package.

And they have zero upgrade plans because they are terminals that link into servers either a web link or terminal window. The plan is to have a central clone depository on a samba server, if anything happens they will blow another copy down to them using a USB to boot it with a link to the PC's identity. There is no local data stored on the PC.

Anyway we shall see how the netstats get effected after D day I suspect not a lot. Those that have will have already been upgraded those that haven't won't be doing it .

There is no excuse for business to hang on to XP either, probably moreso than private individuals. To do so is putting your business at an unnecessary risk, and any IT department that suggests otherwise is totally irresponsible, and dare I say ignorant.

JWell then, I have a question for some advice if you will. Whats the best way to deal with legacy software. Several scenario's, some will only run on 95 or 98, some will sort of run okay on XP on compatability mode. Some won't run on machines higher than XP. Software that is produced by OEM to support equipment and they don't change it much. Software that when installed on the same machines (laptops) don't work well together.

I sort of envisaged a toughbook with a few virtual machines set up with each respective os and OEM diagnostic software on it. Problem is you need it dumb proof for floor personal so its just double click on a icon.

One should not underestimate the amount of secondary legacy software out there that rely's on the old OS

They more than likely aren't saying that to be honest.

But the accountants are blocking it. They have memory's back to Y2K.

Even if they can hold off paying out the cash for 6 months they see it as good business.

I don't I can think of 4 applications our engineers use that can't be ported onto modern laptops because they rely on the Rs232 port. And upgrading the software costs a 5 figure sum. And they need the internet to fire the data up to the OEM's database. Must go and clone them again actually. 2 of them are NT4 one is win95 and the other 98. Including software upgrades it would cost in the region of 250k to replace them.

RS232, :{:{:{ If that didn't cause some hassals until the usb 232 converters became half consistent. Though I presume theres some that still won't play the game.

I actually see the need for change driven by the move towards 64 bit systems rather than a Windoze deadline. In the next decade we will probably be quite nostalgic about 32 bit systems as we are today about 8 and 16 bit systems.

A good business would deal with the upgrade issue as follows: All infrastructure needs to be life cycle managed including IT infrastructure. Either one pays small amounts in upkeep as they chug along or pays one large amount up front for a clean slate every 5 years or so - if done properly the costs should even out over the life cycle of the infrastructure.

For us personal users the IT budget is significantly smaller and writing off assets that are still working becomes difficult without a tax offset. I have a pressing need for 64 bit computing but I cannot see myself updating my standalone XP computer (not my XP laptop) which has thousands of dollars worth of software on it that all works very well.

I guess there will be many millions of users stuck in that same predicament for some time to come.

There is a huge problem with this. The people who typically write firmware for embedded systems typically dont understand how high level operating systems work. They are used to writing software that talks directly to hardware as opposed to working with a layer of hardware abstraction. I know, I was the same once. So with win 95 and earlier, you could write software that talked directly with the UART for serial comms, but come Win NT you could no longer do this.

Enter the USB to Serial. First, you cant talk directly to the serial port. Second, there is another layer of abstraction that is the USB part, which essentially simulates a com port.

I have spent a lot of time, rewriting software that was written by hardware engineers so it works with modern OS's. Its not that hard. We have had 20 years now to sort this issue out. The problem being, most industrial hardware is designed to last more than 20 years. Any industrial hardware designed to last that long is not going to be cheap. AT some point, business just has to fork out the money to upgrade software. What annoys me, is most software from that era can be rewritten in a few weeks, it should not cost that much to replace.

rh200 don't start about it, its been a bloody nightmare.

I managed to get 4 applications working using usb RS232 port but the others will just not play at all there is a funny interface driver thingy. You can telnet into the device to configure it but as soon as you start mucking around with data downloads it just doesn't work.

if your needing a easy one the old aspire 1's have a proper port :ok:

The OEM say send us a PO and we will give you the software that does work we don't support that anymore. Oh and now the licensing is per engine not a company policy single license. OK so that's 46 licenses we will need and that's the cost of a brand new engine. Or I can buy on ebay 3 laptops of exactly the same model. And fire a clone of the original laptop onto them once I give them a new HD. Then one lives at the hanger, one in the fire safe, one at the CAMO's house and one in the bosses basement. Total cost 400 euros versus 250k.

Anyway I recon 4 out of 8 was pretty good. Certainly more that the IT department managed.

Not unless it breaks, and even if someone already has upgraded it and it costs 5k to upgrade and the old system still works it won't be upgraded.

Thanks Andy for that explanation I was wondering what the hell was going on. First time I came across it was 2 million worth of ATR sitting out the front and everyone !!!!ting themselves because they couldn't get a Pentium pro win95 machine to boot.

Point is, its now unsupported, so its good as broken... In fact, if you need win 95 to run it, its been broken for a long time now. The longer you delay that upgrade, the harder it becomes. This is one reason I now I insist all our clients upgrade as each new os/dev upgrade occurs. Its much cheaper in the long run that way.

Exactly nothing has happened yet in how long?

Can you honestly believe that anyone is going to spend 250k to replace something which works everyday with no problems?

Those laptops will be going with exactly the same software on until the last of the type is turned into razor blades.

The fact is you say its good as broken but the fact is it gets used everyday and it works so until its properly broken akin to the engine compressor is seazed it will be staying on the wing. To be honest if any of the IT guys even attempted to touch them they would get there fingers broken.

mad_jock, I see the argument from both sides. I have to deal with it on a regular basis. Trust me, it gets that bad you can no longer find hardware that will run the software you need. People resist, it just makes it harder in the long run. Upgrading and spending money is a sad reality these days, you just have to do it to survive.

Thats why i have 3 spares for each essential laptop all fully functional and tested.

And the broken fingers has happened during a discussion about if the device was going to be earth tested.

Well I will have remove it if it doesn`t have a valid safety check.

No you won`t

<snap> as fingers removed from laptop.

Apart from when I actually worked in IT. At no point did they have any control over the computer hardware attached to any equipment that i have used. Some of the equipment the oem has been out of buisness for the last 10 years. Your not going to junk half a mills worth of calibrated engineering test equipment just because it runs only on NT or XP.

The point is you have equipment that is worth millions of dollars and even more in downtime that is reliant on half baked software made by the OEM to only work on there equipment and will only run on say 95.

Its not a mater of won't upgrade, its can't upgrade. Had this not so long ago, one farsical example up until a couple of years ago still required DOS. Hell being able to use XP on these things would be a god send.

Basically the case in the industry I'm using as an example. The problem we have today is a lot of the IT people these days are more of a ghost stuff and reload packages type people. A lot of the ground level diagnostic software is usually dealt with by one of the ground level end users who has the "nerd" skills to try and sort it.

I understand the problem, dont worry! When it comes to commercial gear, its absolutely piss poor that manufacturers dont provide an upgrade path. I see it all the time, and old PLC used in a factory that is 30 years old and the only software is dos based. Factory is running around the clock, so why bother upgrading all the controllers? Down time = lost money, upgrade time = down time. Its hard to justify.

I had one case just recently, software written for DOS. I tried to make it work under XP, gave up and rewrote the software for Win 8. Took me all of 3 days. Lucky for me it was an inhouse product, so I had access to the source code.

Just thought of another example where upgrade to win 7 is a problem.

We have a piece of software that we designed for reporting and tracking of hardware faults on a casino floor using mobile terminals. The casino is doing the Win 7 upgrade thing at the moment, and when they ran out client side software, they discovered they cannot print. So I load it up on win 7, sure enough when you hit the print button, it no longer shows the print dialog box. So reading around, this is because MS has upgraded the print dialog box in the API to use the new Win 7 look and feel. To make it work is simple, you just have to tell windows to use the old interface. Easy fix, and we roll out a new version of software. Imagine this was a large software package used for commercial environment like a bank, not so easy to fix.

And what sort of muppets do a production rollout without testing it first ? :cool:

Testing print functionality prior to a rollout seems to be a bit of a no-brainer in the scenario you propose !

Yep, if you got the skills and the source code, at least your up the creek with something that can be used as a paddle.

Every roll out I did had something similar come up and some of those rollouts were designed and built by the likes of ICL in there day. Who I presume knew what they were doing.

Floor walking was a nightmare there was applications coming out of the woodwork that had never been heard of before never mind made into deployment packages.

And the day that they took the SNA gateway down to the mainframe was just bizarre. The amount of crap that was routed through that thing which nobody seemed to have a clue that it was going through there was unbelievable. Client IT was pooing themselves because some major stuff was off line and was wanting it put back. The drop down that night was pretty much irreversible because it had taken 2 weeks to write the scripts we had run the previous night to reconfigure everything. Plus the cisco guru had buggered off after working 24hours and wasn't answering his phone.

And yes we had spent 3 weeks testing with what we thought was the deployed spec.

I was Unix, Micro!!!!e and amateur level routers/networks , we had a sprinkling of netware skills as well. The phrase of the day was "how bizarre"

Linked to my personal one of "which idiot moved the switch night to Tuesday instead of Thursday like I had planned for?" this was due to everyone being on flexi time and usually disappeared at Friday lunch. So my thinking was mayhem for 6 hours then get a snag list which we could sort Friday afternoon, sat and sunday. But o no that was over ruled for some reason which I never found out why.

Anyway the life of the contractor. If you don't want to listen that's up to you I get paid whatever happens and I don't have to live with the consequences.

OFSO is back in town, and riding the UBUNTU wave on his new PC. Three OSs installed, UBUNTU, MINT, and on a separate disc theres....no, I better not say.

I'm really enjoying this thread
 

I particularly enjoy the input from mixture. Is he running a bit rich?

Mixture will blow a gasket at this rate to be sure - calm down old son.


Regards
Exeng

exeng,

Well, I guess I should probably compliment you on the wordplay there ! :D

As I said on my last post, I've resorted to applying the "some people learn the hard way" motto to those here who have XP stubbornness.

Thats true to a sense, but there's those that don't have a choice due to legacy software issues that have no alternatives.

I'm sure theres a way to work around that if there was the expertise that could configure things at and indepth level But frankly most IT guys at the first level and one removed just don't have what it takes.

I know some guys who worked in IT at a major UK Company - they were installing a completely new system and it took forever - every weekend they took the system down, installed the new bits and brought it to life on Sunday evening only to hear around 11:00 am on Monday that yet another hitherto unknown, but largely used and financially significant, application wasn't working

there was stuff there that had been patched in from the mid 60's apparently that people were still happy (indeed insistent) they used for everyday work

scarey stuff

Clearly you dont work in an enterprise IT environment ;)

There is thousands of bits of software to be tested, over tens of thousands of computers. A rollout of a new OS en masse across a large enterprise organisation is no simple task. Sometimes, things get overlooked. Sure, we could spend a couple of hundred million doing full system testing of everything, but interestingly enough sometimes you still miss things... Let me know when you are perfect.

BTW, its our software, not the clients and we have never tested it on win 7 as we have never had the requirement. Now the client wants to run it on Win 7, we have upgraded the software and fully tested on Win 7. This week it will be tested on win 8 and win 8.1, even though we have no need to do so just yet. Now I have not checked MSDN yet, but there is a rumour win 9 beta is due out in a couple of months, and I will probably also restest on that too. Happy?

The Chinese don't appear to be hearing the Microsoft XP mantra... or are they?

Microsoft announces extended Windows XP support in China -- or has it? | Microsoft windows - InfoWorld

Caco

Browsing vendors in London this week, I was only offered WIN8 as a private user.

I asked - if I was a business user ? Oh, you can have WIN7. Do you need proof ? No.

And if it's for education purposes ? Oh, you get a discount. Do you need proof ? No.

Users refuse to chuck XP as Windows 8 uptake flattens - Computerworld

I suspect this is going to get quite amusing at some point.

I've worked in all sorts of environments large and small.

But I don't know the details of your project, so I think we'd best agree to disagree there..... I was merely commenting on based on the vague wording of your original post.

Should I stay with Windows XP after April 8th?
 

So I understand that XP support will cease after April 8th, I am tempted to stick with it for a while as I am going to have to replace my ageing computer anyway but can't afford it just yet.

Presumably there would only be a big problem if they discovered a major security flaw after the support has stopped which left computers vulnerable.

Also, when I do upgrade, I understand that Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 with touch screen capability which I don't want/need, so would I be better sticking with Windows 7?

Thankyou for any thoughts/feedback

Wigglyamps

Despite all the people who say you will die a horrible burning death and you computer will cause it if you dont upgrade, you will be fine. Not sure if the virus mobs will keep updating for XP, but if they do just make sure you stay up to date. You should make a conceded effort to upgrade why the time/money permits, as it makes it safer for you and prevents your computer being used as a method of attacking other servers.

Windows 8 is more or less the same as Windows 7. There is quite a few changes under the hood that the public does not see that makes it better, but for the average user it will make no difference. From your perspective, the big difference as you suggest is the user interface. For the layman, I would say get used to the new win 8 format, its better suited to those who are not technical. However if you are most comfortable with XP, then make sure you buy a computer with Windows 8.1 and get the shop to configure it so its like Windows XP.

Am in same situation - XP working perfectly!

Buying Apple Mac this week!

Boxcar
 

With all due respect with Mixture et al.

What really matters is what the user PC population of China and other parts of the world do.

The statistics are estimates of course, without the margins for error stated, but something like 29 % of all active Internet connected PC's in use are still using XP. A lot! hopefully using revision SP3, which in many ways was a new operating System.

Fixes will still be applied to XP if you are prepared to pay for them.

Some mitigation may be provided by running as a restricted user when accessing the internet, but unfortunately its the normal background processess that are the real threat.

Mixture, among others, has mentioned the API's ie Application Programming interfaces, where human created program code meets the application services provided by the computer operating system.

These families of "low level" programmer / machine interaction functions are by good reason, shared across various versions of Windows and siliarly within other operating systems. Vunerabilities discovered, (not a trivial task) and fixed in later versions of operating systems, can still be leveraged in un patched older versions still used on the internet, causing trouble in their wake.

A glaring example (a much simpller case) is covered elsewhere on the Forums where a user has had the potential hijacking of an email A/C to send spam. Not the users fault, but it still happens - I have been lucky, but a few years back i had the data on a HD destroyed interactively, Anti virus, Firewall and all on XP SP3. That's an old fashioned attack now but the methodology can be used for much greater harm.

The big problem for Microsoft in particular is the persistance in the tail end of the user base still using XP. 13-14 Years on

"It works OK for me - Why change" is the mantra chanted as a barb, in the tech press, but the reality for many users; is that the Computers used represented a significant cost of purchase and cannot be easily be replaced.

CAT III NDB

Wiggly, check your PM !

My apologies to all here. During the period between my motherboard failing the week before last, and a new PC emerging this weekend, with Ubuntu on one drive, and the other drive holding The Operating System That Does Not Dare To Speak Its Name, I dug out my very first laptop, running WIN98, and posted a few times on PPRuNe using that. Hope nobody caught anything.

Most people (including me) don't like the tiled Win8x interface, finding it irritating and clumsy on a desktop.

If MS persist in making it obligatory for Win8 AND want to get folks off XP then why not offer a cheap upgrade to the appropriate version of Win7?

Or is that too simple (and unlucrative)?

Mac

PS: Classic Shell - Classic Shell - Start menu and other Windows enhancements - is free and solves many of Win8's interface problems but most Win8 grumblers seem to dumb to find it.

Mac
 

"Or is that too simple (and unlucrative)?"

A hole in one there - There are generations of users who prefer the earlier approach to application selection - Done to death elsewhere.

Change for the sake of profit.

OK with the changes under the hood and PS Older Drivers seem to work with on probs with 64 Bit Versions of 8.1 [So far] for me.

CATIII-NDB

This post is coming to you via a mac. Seriously, its one of the most overrated, over hyped, over priced pieces of !!!! I have ever purchased. Dont waste your cash. I have more grief with this POS than any modern windows machine. If you want the pain, you are better of going down the linux path.

It would seem you are the minority apparently. According to MS, the main userbase prefers the metro interface. In Win 8.1, they only reintroduced the old desktop to keep whingers like you and me happy...As a developer, I am forcing myself to use the metro interface as it looks like its going to be around for a while.

You have absolutley no idea what you are talking about and you obviously have inherent bias towards Windows and Linux.

I have used all three. I would favour Windows or Mac over Linux any day for desktop computing, Linux is just not ready for prime time on the desktop.... fantastic as a server with console interface.... but desktop... no way !

There is nothing wrong with mac and is is certainly not a POS that gives you grief.... nor is it " overrated, over hyped, over priced" .... its one of the most solid, stable platforms I've used over the years. They are robust systems with decent components that will take a beating and given that OS X works on a BSD backend you are basically hoisting yourself by your own petard saying OS X is a POS because you are effectively saying your beloved open source community BSD is also a POS !

Yes, I've noticed that there has been a subtle swing to tiles in some form or another in a lot of internet sites.

And most advertisements for laptops these day proudly offer W 8.1 with a touch screen interface as though it's some sort of big deal. Perhaps it is - I've yet to be seduced - despite having a few android tablets and phones in the family.

It's seems unlikely that there will be a return to former more familiar (mouse click) selection options. At present of course one can use either mouse or "stab" options (I think), but could it be that some point in the future, the move is made right way from mouse selection altogether? :(

Wow, you certainly have got me wrong!!! If I had any bias, its probably toward MS cause I spend so much of my working life with it. As for linux, I use it because I have to, not because I like it. To be honest, it probably makes me more money than anything else.

IF you are going to buy a PC/notebook you can do mucher better value for money than Mac is what I am saying. In saying that, I make money from it, so I dont really care either way. I have more crashes on MAC than any other OS these days. And BTW, OSX does not work on a BSD backend, its bastardisation of many things of which one is BSD.

As I sit here typing this message on my MacBook, the fan is going flat out trying to cool the machine down. After while, it will get so hot that it will shut down a core and start running slow.

These days everything is moving toward portable computing, ie tables and laptops so the old mouse and keyboard are on they way out. I have one of those Asus Zenbooks (FWIW, best laptop I have ever owned) with a touch screen. You dont use the touch screen much, but sometimes its a nice addition when scrolling through documents and web pages.