EVE General Discussion

And that folks is why WoW is also #1 -- old, but runs on almost anything. The AOL of the 21st century.

Which is why these older MMOs are really cautious updating their game (plus PC gaming -- at least currently -- is declining and that's less new players to justify it).

But like there's tech companies that support these businesses that can't afford to update their custom software (legal office spent $50,000 on their internal file system...their own Library of Congress...to update today would sink a small legal office [and you can't outsource it to a foreign country like India or Russia]), there will be options for them. One is VM and independent of even MS.

For the rest of players, especially gamers, you have to update eventually. The game companies have to at least stay relevant, and will slowly close support on older operating systems to do so.

Sure is pretty here in the walled garden. Join usssssssssssssss

who in the hell is using windows xp anymore anyways

We've had people mention law firms running NT4 and the Los Angeles hospital running XP.

I don't know where that law firm is but if it were in London then I may have had a hand in intalling the systems, the document management software and the like. NT4 simply worked and it wasn't glamourous - it didn't run games too well and the Plug an Play tried to work.

But for business machines it was brillant and there is still no case for office administration to use anything else. Just because it's old doesn't mean that it has to be dumped. The only reason wjy MS want us to change to something new and shiny is to pay their coders. But for 99% of office life NT4 (or rather NT4.1) is more than adequate.

From that time of the NT world I bought my home office printer; that's a workhorse of an HP4000 printer. Still one of the best printers around and, no it doesn't have network capability (it does now with a dongle) and it was built before USB was heard of But is that a reason to change? No.

The LA hospital is similar to the NHS here in the UK. A lot of it runs on XP and it runs well.

My mate runs a home recording studio and he's got his stuff running through an XP machine and with the devices on firewire. Yes, he could run on Windows 7 but, guess what, it's runs better and faster on XP. This is another problem we're finding these days; the hardware is being dumbed down too. Firewire is nigh on impossible to find these days but it's better, far better, than USB.

This is the way that the worls works; go and use some crufty new piece of hardware but it's new and therefore it's "better" even though the specs tell you otherwise. But the mp3 generation will follow bleating like sheep. A good example are these new £200 headphones endorsed by an R&B 'musician' and the quality is crap. But who cares? It sells. It's new and it's shiny. so we must folllow bleating to downgrade.

Should I also downgrade my music collection from .flac to .mp3 because it's the thing to do? No. .flac is far superior and the same argument goes with XP/Win 7.

Win 7 is fine for playing game, it's fine for running off the shelf apps as if it were an uber-tablet for actually 'doing stuff' it's poor and as my mate testifies it's hopeless for proper music production. My step daughter, a musician*, living in the Republic of Yorkshire is negotiating a record contract now and she does her own home recording so it's fair to say that she knows a little about music as she's a singer/songwirter - guess what operating system she uses to record her music and to drive her mixing desk? Yes XP with Firewire.


(* a musician - not a DJ)

Interesting, I did not know that. And this was 4 years ago?!? How can they claim they still support XP?

Mainstream "retail" support for windows xp ended 4? years ago. The only support they currently offer is the "Extended" support for businesses. The extended business support ends next April.

Any home user still using Windows XP essentially has been "drinking and eating spoiled food" several years past the expiration date.

"Mainstream" support ended on 14.4.2009. That means no new features (Service Packs).

"Extended" ends on 8.4.2014. Only way to get support for Windows XP after this date is to pay, pay a lot of money. So pretty much all home users, small/medium sized businesses will be left behind if they don't want to upgrade.

Yes, many businesses still use XP. Primarily because many businesses still haven't learned how necessary it is to have an adequate IT budget. So they get further and further behind where they need to be until it becomes a nightmare to catch up.

This applies equally to both small and large business the world over. Eventually they will be forced to bite the bullet and start treating their computing needs with the respect it deserves. To do otherwise can do a company significant harm, and is very short sighted.

For us however the situation is much simpler.

We are gamers, and that "should" mean that we understand that we must have at least half way up to date hardware and software to be able to continue to game on our PCs.

I fully understand that everyone is on a budget, but if you game that budget needs to include OS and hardware upgrades on a semi-regular basis... at least once or twice a decade.