Windows XP

I'm sure many of you already know this. Microsoft is going to discontinue support for Windows XP SP3 on April 8,2014. No more software, driver & security updates and bug fixes will be available after that date. At one point there were about 800 million computers running Windows XP, over 1/3 of the computers still in use run this OS. What does it mean for the e-scrapper? More computers being disposed of as they get upgraded? frustrated people trying to install a new OS on old computers with less than 1g ram?. Doesn't mean the computers will stop working but the hackers are already drooling, millions of potential targets.
Now would be the time to further build relationships with the computer repair shops, whether your buying or hauling away for free there's likely to be an influx of scrap computers as we move farther into 2014. For those of you selling working systems with XP get them sold now, values likely to drop later in the year.
For me I have 5 XP systems that I either use or take care of, guess its time for some upgrades.
As always good luck in all of your adventures, be safe, work smart.

haha, the week before tax time everybodies computer crashes ; )

I was likely the last to settle in with XP, prior to that a die hard 2K user. It's not so bad long as you have a good firewall and learn to use it, and keep the spybot and malware cleaned off, and be careful where you click.
The worst part comes as other software makers change things to the point it will no longer work together. It was years after support stopped for 2k that I began to see the inevitable end nearing. During the Olympics in China most of the video portions required XP or higher to view em. Then the anti-viruses makers stop support or updates, etc
I believe a lot of people, including scores of IT professionals, will continue using XP for quite some time

If you are just using the computer for word processing and the net (which is what most old computers still in use are used for) how much computer do you really need? I used a 2.4 gh pentium 4 for years running xp and really saw no reason to upgrade. It did what I wanted it to at what I felt was an acceptable level. Finally, my MB died and I was forced to put together another system, which ended up being a dual core I got from an auction. Going from a single core at 2.4gh with 2 gb ram to a core 2 duo at 2.33 with 4 gb ram I see very little difference in performance.

Rather than throw away an old system on XP, I'd bet all the xp systems will run windows 7.

Windows 7 system requirements - Microsoft Windows

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver


While at first blush it may seem that you won't be able to install a new video card ect... which is true, most of these systems wouldn't support the hardware even if they did still support xp (ie. Older systems use PCI or AGP video not PCI express). Also most people have no idea of what the updates really even do and are oblivious to what it even means that microsoft is no longer supporting XP.

Additionally, most of the drivers are made by a 3rd party, and they certainly will have an XP driver as long as they feel these users are buying their products.

I think we are going to find that Microsoft's lack of support is not going to create a "wave" of upgrades and a surplus of XP machines.

Businesses will be the ones most pressured to choose either keeping their present system and migrating to 7 (which is by far, in latest versions, the choice of most techs) or to upgrade their networks with newer hardware and operating systems.

love xp and w2000 the last of the no spy systems. any thing newer you might as well be downloading daily directly to any of the back doors. I have w8 now and hate it. just my .01

I intend to keep using XP as the OS in computers I sell at least for awhile. In order to accomplish this I'm loading XP on a extra hard drive. Then I'm going to get all updates installed including SP3. Once that's completed and after the ability to update has ended, I'll just clone other hard drives from that one.

You need a half decent video card to run aero on Windows 7, a dual core or better CPU makes the experience better.

The major issue with XP these days is needing a newer browser for web use.