R.I.P Windows XP 2002 - 2014

[SilverRST]

I used Windows Vista 5 years. It was a good OS, I had nothing to complain about it. When I got my new PC together with Windows7, I felt in love.

It's so much easier and more organized than Vista.

[Slamman]

Sort of a question about Windows XP, don't jump on my back for anything you might think OT with this, but I wanted earlier to touch on Media Center Edition, came out in 2005, although there appears to be a 2004 precursor. I wanted and came upon an HP Pavilion Media Center PC using Asus boards at the time, now I want to ask if anyone coming across this has had one, or owned what came with these, tuner capture cards Asus Falcon2?

http://www.legendmicro.com/store/6472_ASUS-FALCON2-TUNER-CARD-HP-5188-4214-5188-4214.lmsp?OpenTreeBranches=

 

(I did some newer downloads like the ones from the above site links, but I'm sure I tried that before... With no luck, even some discs from eBay, and it gives me an interface GUI but still no functions from the card. A headache and a half.)

I did rather tireless research for drivers to use them with Windows 7 or 8, to no avail, and from all I've heard MCE Windows XP should support them from the get-go. There were some patch like drivers on HP's site, but still, I think thus far MCE XP is the only way to go for a restore.

 

Other used copies of Media Center XP seem to be showing continued demand for.

Now MCE was included for awhile, then became somewhat associated with Windows Live Essentials, and there was a brew-haha about Essentials and DVD multimedia software being excluded from Windows 8 (still available as a download)

We're getting away from XP specifically, I know, but this was what I think a precursor to the modern Media Center player that coincides in Windows now with Windows Media Player ...WMP

Giving users a full screen control for external displays and sharing media files with other computers, Xbox360s, etc.

 

Basically, the abridged version of the above ^, I want to know if any of you had owned a MCE PC before Vista, or Windows 7/8?

Can you relate if Windows XP MCE had this support as suggested? I read that Cyberhome PowerDVD and Power Producer or something similar, specially modified software might have come with any tuner card Dell sold as optioned, (Dell in this case I just Googled what I could find about the model card) You could answer this in the Have A Question topic by just cutting and pasting this post if it's deemed going Off Topic again.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Slamman

[OG Viking]

I don't plan on retire my XP. Not until MS make a new Windows as lightweight as XP, and it also must have a similar GUI as XP. I have tried 7 and it was all right, but I like XP a lot more in Classic mode.

 

Windows 7 is confusing with the programs that has icons on the task bar whether they run or not. I want the same task bar as in XP, including that old quick-launch buttons.

 

And XP is a lot faster than 7 on old hardware. Why should an OS require gigabytes of RAM? I used to think XP was bloated, but it runs on 128 MB and pretty much any Pentium CPU.

 

XP isn't very secure, but much of the risks can be reduced by not allowing all kinds of scripts everywhere. Use security software and browser extensions to reduce the risks.

 

Hell, if I could no longer use XP, I might be tempted to go back to DOS...

[DEALUX]

^ I don't think they can make it as light as XP and they have no incentive to do that.

 

I am also pretty sure that you can customize Windows 7 to look more like XP with certain modifications\software.

[sivispacem]

If you want a lightweight OS, use a Linux derivative. I've been running Lubuntu on an Atom powered netbook for a couple of years and it's pretty damn fast. I've also got Kali as a dual boot with 8 on my ThinkPad and its faster than Windows by a country mile.

[DEALUX]

I don't know about Lubuntu. It's quite fast and it has a similar interface to Windows, but it wasn't faster than XP for me (on x86-32 bit). Plus I ran into some issues with software. Some of the programs I installed (using the software center or whatever it's called) were nowhere to be found. I don't know how other lightweight distros perform compared to Lubuntu.

 

Also, if anyone decides to install Linux on an old PC, be aware of the fact that the Flash plugin won't work on Chrome unless your CPU supports SSE2 (you can run CPU-Z to check what instructions it supports). Pentium 4 and above should have it but it was implemented a bit later in single core AMD CPUs. You can otherwise run an older version of Flash in Firefox that won't work forever. Adobe has discontinued support for Linux but Google is still providing Flash updates for Chrome.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Criѕtian