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Tom, no sense shaking your fist! :) Yeah, I made all those steps, starting with OS2. No, starting with DOS. XP is a great system, and as somebody suggested in this thread, enough push-back may convince MS to extend support. Didn't that happen once before? The install base is enormous. Not to make like an IT analyst here - not one - but it has worked out that Microsoft OSes that were meant for home hobby users got taken up by business almost immediately. I mean Windows 95 once it got proper networking. IBMers in the North East were mostly using 98 by the time OS2 died out (that in part because all the customers were using Windows). This ginormous company was willing to pay MS for the honor of abandoning their own invention. Our site was kind of an outlier, and we went from OS2 to NT - a much better product than 98, but not as plug&play, so more support-intensive. But, when we were folded into the bigger corporate structure, we downgraded users to 98! It was what corp IT was supporting. The point is it was good enough and universal enough that it was better. After NT, MS must have reasoned that there was no point in making different amateur and professional operating systems, and focused on one platform to serve them all, with small changes in emphasis and intentional limitations to differentiate the products. I guess it didn't make sense to offer a business desktop without the frills. And, yes, IT is a cost to business. In the late 90s to early 00s, as the reliability of new hardware rapidly increased and cost decreased, the cost of maintaining the staff to maintain the older machines grew higher than the cost of new HW. That better HW is part of what drove advances in OS, a symbiotic deal. Platforms were rapidly turned over, and I was soon turned out. Me and 14,000 other redundancies that day. It's a dog's life in the IT world. I love the idea of old stuff remaining useful. But the question of newer/better is an individual thing. If I had a buck for every hour I've spent attempting to rescue data off a friend's old machine that was "working fine just last week," I could buy a MAC. Now, indulge me a minute to consider the question of cost. Thirty years ago, in pro audio, we spent at least $1000 to buy just about anything that was important, and that's worth about $2700 today. That thing might have worked for 30 plus years and still be useful now. But it did only one thing. One thing. The low cost of PCs and OSes, matched with their stupendous utility, have spoiled us into a skewed sense of value about everything. Obviously, the powers in Vermont should just buy Andy a whole new studio rather than wasting his time on half-measures like this. Can I get a witness? -----Original Message----- From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Fine Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 11:44 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The end of Windows XP? So What !!! Hi Carl: For most corporate everyday tasks, there was enough user interface and computing power back with Windows 2000 (an update of WinNT that brought the user interface in line with Win98, and improved many things). Most of that power was brought into WinXP for home users, and XP Pro continued the improvements for corporate users. So for most of us, there is no reason except forced obsolesence to "upgrade" any further. In my opinion, only someone with more money than brains runs out and gets every "upgrade." There is now a long history of lardware, "feature-creep" and ill-conceived "reinvent the wheel" disasters (like Windows 8, for instance). If something works well, the wise man sticks with it until he's absolutely sure that something better has finally come down the pike. Newer <> better. In a business setting, IT budgets are basically massive cost centers unless they are directly improving productivity and allowing machines to take over work done by people. So, needless "upgrades" and needless hours wasted re-training people on new software direct impacts the bottom line. In small businesses like mine, it's money directly out of my pocket, twice (once to buy the un-needed "upgrade" and once to use non-billable hours trying to figure it out). BTW, I didn't switch to XP until it was up to SP3. Win2K was serving my needs just fine. By SP3, XP was clearly a superior operating environment and could be tuned to look and act almost exactly like Win2K with some ease-of-use improvements. -- Tom Fine ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl Pultz" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 10:16 AM Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The end of Windows XP? So What !!! > It's surprising how much mission critical corporate infrastructure runs on > old platforms. When I was a tech at an IBM data center ten years ago, there > was tons of old junk running monitoring and disaster-recovery systems for > big corps, with whining hard drives and irreplaceable hardware - disasters > waiting to happen. I was amazed at the willingness of managers to roll the > dice at that level with that much wealth on the line. I doubt that has > changed, though older PC gear is much more capable now than what was old > then. > > Anyway, for small shops it is reasonable to run old stuff isolated so long > as you don't create more hassle with that than the effort of upgrades. Keep > a close eye on the HW and the 'restorablility' of your old box. Keep system > images, compatible maintenance utilities, and spare parts on hand. If you > are only going to play in your own sandbox, that's fine. If you need skills > that are portable, or you need to interoperate with other environments or > people who have moved on, then it's good to stay conversant with newer > formats, interfaces, and standards. Unlike tape machines, there isn't > usually anything endearingly better about older computer gear, and upgrades > are deductible business expenses. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dan Nelson > Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 11:59 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The end of Windows XP? So What !!! > > So what if MS stops security updates for XP..... > I have xp pro running on all of my stand alone audio work stations... none > of them are on line ! > Just like 10's of thousand corporate computers are running XP isolated from > the internet as long as XP runs the existing internal programs MS dropping > support doesnt matter. > My work stations are running Intel I3 with 8 gigs of ram .... more than xp > knows what to do with but they run 12-18 hours a day and never blink. > Just run XP off line and save the hassel of finding replacement programs . > dnward > Beautiful Music you will never forget, at; > http://www.americanbeautiful.podbean.com/ > >