the Win XP scare

[EZWind]

Sorry...this is neither politics nor religion, but...
...the Win XP that I've been running for the last 10 or 12 years has been serving me well w/ minimal problems, but now Microsoft is saying I better pony up for the latest Win 8 or I'm gonna be in big trouble from nasty hackers and such.
My question...anyone else in the same boat? Is the situation really as dire as they're making it sound? I've got the Norton 360 from Symantic on here and it does a good job catching various malware and spyware threats.
I do download a fair amount of "adult material" from the various forums and such places like keep2share and rapidgator...and I do use the debit card to purchase the occasional airline ticket and the like
So, what's the deal? Am I asking for trouble if I don't upgrade? OK so I'm an old fart, but I'd just as soon stay back here in the 20th century w/ the ole XP if I had my druthers. Will the discontinuation of the automatic updates and patches etc, really make things that dangerous?

[Ben in LA]

I'm still using Vista (albeit updated of course); I haven't had any problems. My job still uses XP; no problems there either. Then again, they don't download porn (as far as I know). I would assume if you're careful everything should be kewl.

It is a good idea to upgrade eventually though.

[dderek123]

People should try Ubuntu. It's a lot like XP. More secure, fewer viruses and it's free. You'll miss the MS applications that you are familar with/depend on though.

[Ben in LA]

People should try Ubuntu. It's a lot like XP. More secure, fewer viruses and it's free. You'll miss the MS applications that you are familar with/depend on though.

I had it on a partition of my hard drive, but couldn't connect to the net to get all of the updates and such. So I removed it.

[dderek123]

I had it on a partition of my hard drive, but couldn't connect to the net to get all of the updates and such. So I removed it.

Yep it can be finicky at the beginning on different hardware. There's usually no issues with PCs that are 5 years old or younger. There was one time I had to wrestle with the command line for a long while to get everything working. That was pretty challenging but afterwards things ran smoothly. Some people actually download an older version of ubuntu as an easier way around the problem.

I'm on Vista at the moment. Everything is working fine :banana:

[flabbybody]

From the internet to smart phones to cloud Microsoft has gotten every new technology trend totally wrong. Windows is a dying platform and it's really hard to find a person under 30 who uses a PC unless his/her job requires it.
The new CEO has finally raised the white flag and is making Office applications available on iPad and iPhone.... a decision that Balmer was too stubborn and stupid to make 2 years ago. Now MSFT stock is finally showing life after torturing shareholders with underperformance for 15 years.
For me, too little too late.

[EZWind]

Thanx for the feedback, mates

[buttslinger]

Looks like it's time to google windows XP for input on what to do when Windows drops updates which could foil hackers, might as well google HEARTBLEED the latest scare which could allow some unscrupoolous character to find out all your juicy secrets on HA, as well as passwords to money accounts and stuff like that. Now BUTTSLINGER is not lazy enough to use the same password over and over again,...............but some of you who do might take this opportunity to review your security protocols and clean up old bad habits.


http://heartbleed.com/