Is using XP dangerous now.

This is worth a read

http://www.infopackets.com/news/9005/using-windows-xp-really-dangerous

 

That makes for some interesting reading Dougie, thanks for posting. What I'm telling my customers is that although their XP machines won't stop working (some of them think this), they should move on to Windows 7, or even replace their computers for new ones that have Windows 8 pre-installed.

Most of them so far are moving to Win 7. I still prefer Win 7 on my desktop myself.

 

From things I have seen, maybe here on CHF, or on other sites there are people running small businesses which require the use of software that for various reasons will only run on XP. In the situations where there is no up to date version of the software available that can run on later systems, or software that can do an equivalent job, these people are stuck. The only sensible advice has got to be to create backups, and where possible run the machines off line, or at least off line for as much as possible.
However, as it vaguely hinted in that very interesting article, I feel the possible scaremongering by corporate interests is a bit over the top, and as has been pointed out here and elsewhere in the past, there are still quite a few folk running systems where support died a long time ago, even as old as Windows 95 may still be in use with little problems, though how much longer that will be true is another matter.

Nev.

 

These people are not stuck, Nev.
Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise have Windows XP Mode available which requires virtualization software such as Windows Virtual PC. Both are available free on the Microsoft website so they can freely move up to Windows7 providing they install one of the versions listed above.

 

I agree in principal Dougie, and you are quit right, however you do hear all sorts of other sob stories such as they can't afford new computers running professional, or they tried it and either it didn't work, or it only part worked etc, and a few other things.
Some time since, maybe early last year a friend was involved in trying exactly that, and whatever was tried they just couldn't get the virtual system to install, never mind get XP on to the virtual system.
The eventual conclusion was that the system had been upgraded to Professional from Home Premium, rather than starting off as Professional. Whether that was really the cause was never found out as my friends customer gave up on the idea.
At the time apparently there was quite a bit of complaint, usually found via Google, that many others had little success with installing or running the virtual systems so I believe. Personally I haven't had reason to try myself so can only go on a story told to me.

 

I have a few clients with proprietary programs that will not work in Windows 7 so we bought some barely used laptops for very little $ and run the programs on those with XP kept off the internet.

One is a major trucking company whose map routing program has newer versions but they take three times as long to map the route and they just hate the newer versions so that was a simple
chore to setup on a laptop. The other involves an very expensive ($3000+) accounting program for contractors, where there is no newer version as company went out of business some of which Quickbooks Accountant's copy will do but not all of it so we wiped and loaded a good running XP pc and again took it off the internet and are running the program on that.