The deadline approaches. On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will cease delivering updates, critical updates, and patches to Windows XP users, essentially abandoning the most popular Windows operating system (and longest lived) of all time. Using Windows XP after the end of support from Microsoft, is like playing Russian Roulette. No one knows what will happen when Windows XP becomes vulnerable to attack from a wide variety of sources, but no matter what scenario you choose, it’s not going to be pretty.<\/p>\n
Many of you are watching your pennies and so are considering upgrading to your old XP machine to Windows 7 or Windows 8. However, we think this is not a good move for a variety of reasons, and it won’t save you as much money as you might think.<\/p>\n
Windows 7 and Windows 8 are not free<\/p>\n
Whether you choose to upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8, you’re going to have to buy the operating system. Right now this will set you back around $100.00. <\/p>\n
You’ll probably need to add more RAM<\/p>\n
Windows 7 and Windows 8 will run with less than 4GB of RAM installed, but you’ll not get a very good experience running either version of Windows with less than 4GB of RAM. Very few Windows XP computers have 1GB of RAM and even fewer have 2GB or more of RAM. For the average XP user you’ll have to figure in the cost of adding enough RAM so that you have 4GB of RAM. Depending on how much RAM you have now, this will cost you between $40 and $60…and that assumes you install the RAM yourself. It’s not hard to do and doesn’t take very long, but RAM is not free and will add an average of $50 to your upgrade costs. Plus, you may find that your old Windows XP computer’s motherboard doesn’t support more than 1 or 2 GB of RAM.<\/p>\n
So now you’ve spent $150 upgrading your old Windows XP box to Windows 7 or Windows 8<\/p>\n
Now consider that if your Windows XP computer is more than five or six years old (and most are), other hard drive is going to start wearing out — especially vulnerable to wear and tear is your hard drive. If your computer is more than six years old, the chances of a complete hard drive failure increase each year. And if you have to purchase a new hard drive, it’s going to cost you $60 or more — depending on the size of the drive, etc. and assuming you install it yourself — not to mention the hassle of putting in a new drive and re-installing the operating system.<\/p>\n
Are you really going to save money by upgrading your old Windows XP computer<\/p>\n
With the cost of new computers at an all time low, we think upgrading an old Windows XP computer is throwing good money after bad. It’s going to cost you at least $100 and probably more to upgrade. We think that money would be better spent on buying a new computer. We’ve seen some really powerful computers with large hard drives and 4GB or more of RAM in the $300 — $400 price range. We’ve even seen some budget models with 320GB hard drives and 4GB of RAM for less than $300.<\/p>\n
Everything gets old; everything wears out<\/p>\n
We know you all love Windows XP. We did too. But it’s not coming back and it’s going to be very dangerous to use very soon. Windows XP served you well as did your old reliable Windows XP computer. But everything gets old and everything wears out and it is time to move on to another new era.<\/p>\n
Windows 7 and Windows 8 — not so hard to use<\/p>\n
Moving to Windows 7 or Windows 8 from Windows XP might take some getting used to, but it’s still Windows. And if you add a start button to Windows 8 like Classic Shell (free) you’ll bypass the start screen and go right to your desktop — with an XP-style (if you choose) start menu and a desktop you’ll feel very familiar with. <\/p>\n
Lots of people make lots of money writing negative articles about Windows 8, but just adding a start button to Windows 8, which takes just a few minutes, it’s very difficult to tell the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8 — and Windows 8 does add some nice recovery options which are not found in Windows 7 – including System Refresh which allows you to reinstall Windows without losing your precious personal files and folders.<\/p>\n
So we think it’s a very bad idea to try to upgrade an old Windows XP computer to Windows 8. You may save a little money in the short run, but not nearly as much as you might think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The deadline approaches. On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will cease delivering updates, critical updates, and patches to Windows XP users, essentially abandoning the most popular Windows operating system (and longest lived) of all time. Using Windows XP after the end of support from Microsoft, is like playing Russian Roulette. No one knows what will happen when Windows XP\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}