poll closes on 04/30/2021 at 10:30 am

Edited April 11, 20215 yr by VistaEX

If you're going to make these polls, they should actually make sense (bonus points if they were to have a purpose).

Obviously, one could not use XP "forever" (as a main, i presume that is what you are talking about). At some point it will become too difficult/impossible to use it for modern things, for even the most hardcore diehards. So that pretty much takes the first option off of the table for everyone. And presuming one didn't plan to use XP "forever" (or 2025, or 2023...rather inconsistent), switching to Linux is not the ONLY option. One could move to a newer Windows OS, they could use a Mac system, or any number of other things, should they stop using Windows XP.
(as a side note, i find your personal vote of "I will use it forever" extremely amusing, considering every other day, or perhaps even more frequently, it seems you are switching your Main OS.)
Personally, I'll hold out on XP until I can't anymore, whenever that is. I've got too much going on now to give more worry about the future than I already do.

I'll use my XP *FOREVER*.

Even if THIRTY YEARS from now I "might" not be able to use a web browser or email client, I will STILL be using XP even if only on a secondary computer for Chess, Scrabble, Monopoly, Solitaire, Mahjong, Soduko, Kakuro, Crossword Puzzles, and other miscellaneous pass-the-time games that retired old folgies do between naps and yelling at the neighbor kids to get off their lawn.

 

Although, having said that, I will also have to admit that ONE of my SIX "secondary" computers DID get upgraded to Win10 LTSB about five months or so ago because I got tired of several web sites "forcing" me to have FOUR web browsers!  One web browser ONLY for ONE web site.  Another web browser ONLY for a SECOND web site.  A third web browser for rare miscellaneous.  Then my at-the-time default for everything else.

 

But now, ONLY because of 360Chrome, I have THANKFULLY been able to "upgrade" that secondary computer back to WinXP!

Because while I like to tinker with several web browsers, I have no interest in being forced to have different web browsers for different web sites.

Edited February 19, 20215 yr by ArcticFoxie

No, I used to say also that I will use WinXP forever too, but it became unusable for my everyday needs, so I switched to q4OS Linux with xpq4 theme and from then I never looked back at it. Of course I still keep an XP VM around, If I need software that does not work with wine...

I would to use WinXP as far as I can. I even can run Windows 10 vms inside Windows XP, and the experience is better using PAE (my pc have an I5 processor with 4 cores and 8gb of ram). I expect the One Core API/Extended XP will make XP able to run modern software. I'm also thinking that there will be XP bassed operating Systems, maybe with the addition of Linux shell and dlls. So, I still will be using XP, but I don't know if that will be forever. I just expect there will be alternatives to Windows 10, Linux and Mack.

I think there is more to the old operating systems than just internet. These machines are resources of creativity with the tools, that run on them. Writing programs, graphic programs, music programs, programming tools... even if there would be no internet at all, the old computers are capable of plenty of things.

I can work best with the tools that I know best, which are the old tools. Okay, the resolution may not be the highest. But as long as the hardware runs (whose spare parts cost 0 money on the scrapyard)... it would be an uneconomic choice to switch. Consider the time you need to learn new programs! Speaking of Linux? Fantastic for modern internet browsing, but not if you need special tools. Sometimes, the Linux counterparts are poorly designed, too. LibreOffice will never perform as good as Word 97. In fact it performs worse every year! On limited hardware we have to add.
My decision is set in stone. Windows XP until repairing the hardware gets expensive. On to the future with Windows XP!

We'll see what the future holds, but like most of the other responses so far, I've no intention of giving up Windows XP for my daily driver computer.

Even when I had decided to stick with XP back in the Vista days I knew that would mean eventually needing other machines for certain tasks. After all, Microsoft first tried to force gamers into upgrading to the newest Windows OS with Halo 2's release (and with deciding to make DX10 Vista-only, a tactic they've repeatedly used since). So I knew even back then I'd need a dedicated gaming PC not running XP at a certain point. Yet here I am, still running XP64. (I still don't have a dedicated gaming machine either ...)

The main hurdles I foresee in regards to using XP64 indefinitely are hardware-related. Whether that's the market replacing x86 with ARM and thus ensuring new hardware is wholly unusable to x86-based OSes, or a new power supply standard making power supplies compatible with XP-friendly motherboards uncertain, there may come a time where we just can't run XP on bare metal because the hardware just won't support doing so. And it won't simply be a matter of someone finding or writing working drivers.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean I'm pessimistic. When official support ends, the enthusiasts step in. Take a look at the communities for 8-bit computers; those guys are continually teaching old dogs new tricks as it were. They have, for example, made a wi-fi adapter for the Commodore 64. You can find all sorts of bonkers hardware and upgrades out there for 8-bit machines.

Granted, 8-bit machines are simpler than what we deal with here, but I think the same spirit of, shall we say, innovative backwards compatibility is there.

I still use XP as my default OS, and hope to continue to do so for a very long time yet.
I have to have Windows 10 as well now because I have programs I need, like Adobe editing and web publishing programs, which now will only run on 64 bit Windows 10.
For general use I still much prefer the UI of XP though.

My Windows XP pc is still alive.
So there is no reason not to use it for almost every online business including home banking.

Yes, I use XP for online banking without a second thought.
As long as the banking sites don't start failing with my browser (Firefox 52.9 ESR) I see no reason to stop doing that.
I must confess that I've started to go over to Firefox 85 on Windows 10 for sites like Facebook, because they are crawlingly slow in Firefox 52.9.

Even if I cannot use Windows XP for modern activities (websites that require the newest browser), I'm definitely never getting rid of XP. It's a great OS and isn't overly bloated like Windows 10. So, I'll be sure XP stays on the older machines with Linux, and Windows 10 can stay on the hardware XP isn't compatible with.

Not completely XP-related, but I'm annoyed how much Microsoft has bloated Office 365 and Visual Studio. Both have become stupidly slow for simple tasks on a i5 haswell PC from 2015.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by FantasyAcquiesce

I would only use XP on a machine that doesn't perform good enough with a modern operating system (pentium 4 or older) and linux isn't a viable alternative. Software patches are important for our own online safety 

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by TigTex

I said i will stick with xp , but i didnt , i tried switching to newer versions , linux distros , but none of them filled my needs ,

So xp is the best

39 minutes ago, FantasyAcquiesce said:

I'm annoyed how much Microsoft has bloated Office 365 and Visual Studio. Both have become stupidly slow for simple tasks on a i5 haswell PC from 2015.

I have to agree with this!

A few years ago, I needed to install Visual Studio for a class I was taking, and since my daily driver laptop was (and still is) a 2012 MacBook Pro (Ivy Bridge i7-based), I figured I'd install it to a VM for convenience.  Well, that was a mistake, as it took over three hours to install, and it was so slow it was worthless.

So instead, I used an older version of Visual Studio on my Dell Latitude D630 running Windows 2000 or XP (or maybe it was Notepad++ with a standalone compiler?);  the instructor kept looking at me funny for doing this, as he was a big fan of Windows 10, and was of the mindset that all other versions must be immediately and completely forgotten, so almost to spite him (and prove that just because it's old doesn't mean it won't work), I kept using my then 12 year old laptop with a then 17 year old OS   I mean, if it does the job and lets me do the assignments properly, what's the problem?

I'll probably never use XP as my daily driver OS full time, since there's software I like to use which requires at least Windows 7, but that doesn't mean I won't use it for casual web browsing and other things that don't require new software, particularly on hardware which can't run any newer Windows versions very well.

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Edited February 20, 20215 yr by cc333

I wouldn't consider myself to be a hardcore diehard; I just enjoy it, and for me, it's a challenge to keep it running. When somebody says you 'can't' do something, that makes me want to prove them wrong even more! I intend to hold on to it so long as my aging hardware continues to grow old gracefully :)