It just aint right that Bill Gates/Microsoft....

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Feb 4, 2007, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

Because I skipped buying XP, and would like an OS to play my games on.

Well, you could safely jump to XP SP2 - it's tried, true and tested.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Feb 4, 2007, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldBuzzard

Hmmm...by your logic, if I buy VISTA for $500, then it's ok for me to go steal a $500 DX10 video card.

Anyone who can fork out $500 for a video card should have no problem forking out $399 for a copy of Windows Ultimate...

No justification for pirating if you have an 8800 level card - poverty cannot be used as an excuse, after all.

Zelig · Feb 4, 2007, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DudeBoyz

Well, you could safely jump to XP SP2 - it's tried, true and tested.

XP support ends in 2012 though, Vista will last me until 2017 on this computer, no point on buying an older version of something when a newer version is available.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Feb 4, 2007, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

XP support ends in 2012 though, Vista will last me until 2017 on this computer, no point on buying an older version of something when a newer version is available.

2012 - wow, that seems so far away...

I'm a bit confused as to when support ends on XP cause I read somewhere that one kind of support ends like in 2008 or 2009, but another kind is in 2012.

The one I'm concerned with is when the free security patches and such stop coming. Kind of like how they stopped supporting SP1 on XP already so we had to move to SP2.

You know, back when I bought my Alienware machine, it came with XP on it, but I replaced it with Windows 98 SE, cause I was so used to it and it worked great with all my old hardware and games and such. I didn't actually take the step up to XP until sometime in early 2006 I think, when driver support for my ATI cards for 9x was pretty much abandoned. I held on as long as I could.

I would imagine I will do the same thing with Vista. Won't go until I'm forced to. But I do realize that in the end, Microsoft will likely be able to force us whenever it feels like it, simply by refusing to certify any more XP drivers and ceasing the production of XP security patches and the like.

But by that time, hopefully Vista, its apps and its drivers will be stable, fast and optimized. One can hope, at least.

Zelig · Feb 5, 2007, 12:04 AM

Reading up on it, it appears as though MS has recently extended support for XP. Mainstream support goes to 2009, extended support to 2014.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=lifepolicy

That explains what you get with different levels of support, including security patches until 2014.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Feb 5, 2007, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

Reading up on it, it appears as though MS has recently extended support for XP. Mainstream support goes to 2009, extended support to 2014.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=lifepolicy

That explains what you get with different levels of support, including security patches until 2014.

Great link - thanks.

That little table clearly shows what level of support each one gets.

So, it looks like we're golden till 2014 for security patches. But it doesn't say anything about driver certification and support.

Security patches won't be as helpful if they stop certifying XP drivers in 2009 or whatever.

Guess we'll have to see.

Thanks again.