No more XP?

The X2a update will not install on a Win XP system.  Is this permanent?

Vista isn't supported either, although X2 will still install and run on Vista.

Scott

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IIRC I though I saw it stated somewhere that because of the Windows 8 support X2a won't install on XP, so I guess that is permanent.

Why is anybody still using XP? :)

It was clunky, had horrible hardware/software issues, was unreliable, had a habit of self destructing and if you pushed it 'hard' needed re-installing every 6-8 months. 

I'd rather use Vista (on a machine designed to run it) than XP!

it's funny but if you look at Microsoft releases there appears to be a pattern that every other version of windows is poor.

Start with '95 because until then very few people were using PCs on a daily basis, '95 was released with a huge advertising campaign and was for the most part seen as good. Windows '98 was released and it was seen as hopeless. constant crashes, unreliable and not worth the upgrade. Win '98SE however was seen as a big upgrade. Then came Millennium - everyone cried foul. Then we got XP and despite it's almost complete lack of backwards compatibility (something millennium was heavily criticised for) it was seen as the greatest operating system ever. Then came Vista. People said it was crap (it wasn't and still isn't) and now we have Win8 which once folks have got used to the different start menu most of them agree it's very good.

so far, most of that sounds familiar yep?

Now let's look at it another way.....

People bought into Win '95, they bought new (expensive) computers designed to run Win'95 and for the most part they were happy. When '98 came, they may have upgraded the O/S but most didn't want to spend their hard earned money on a new PC so they soldiered on with hardware and software problems they labelled the software as 'crap' when it was really their PCs that were getting old. Win 98 SE brought a whole new raft of PCs to the market, system builders were using it and companies like Time and Tiny computers were suddenly at the forefront supplying purpose built machines. Of course windows SE ran better than '98 because people had upgraded their machines. Then, Millennium came along. Nobody was buying a new PC because they had only just invested in their '98SE machine. Millennium didn't work on these machines so was labelled a turkey. XP gets released and everybody has to update because very little of the old software still runs. PCs are now cheaper and better spec machines are built to run the new version of Windows - loads of people upgrade and XP is a success. Then we get to Vista, it didn't run well on machines designed to run XP, in fact it was horrible on 5 year old machines with low ram and small hard drives. But, if you built a PC that was designed to run Vista you got a great, solid, stable operating system. we had two machines here that ran Vista from day one. Both are quad core machines with loads of RAM and both performed flawlessly (one is still running it's original install of Vista 24 hours a day. 7 days a week and has never crashed or needed re-installing!!!). The other was upgraded to windows 7 which for serious productivity work (3D rendering) was slower than Vista and has now been upgraded to win 8 which runs like a dream on hardware that was mostly designed to run Vista.

My point is that it's not poor operating systems, it's poor users :)

For anyone running Vista, it's absolutely crucial to get ALL the updates. Even after you've updated, see if there are any updates available. People who know more about this stuff than I say that the last several updates essentially replaced blocks of Vista code with what later became Windows 7.

I still have Vista 64-bit running on a PC Audio Labs laptop, I do all my video editing at trade shows on it and it has been totally rock solid.

As to XP...it took me a long time to upgrade to Windows 7 on my desktop machine because XP worked. I finally had to update to run particular programs, and kicked myself for not having done so sooner. The performance improvement was huge.

FastBikerBoy

, I just don't 'get' the fascination with touch screen at all. (Luddite that I am... )

I am with you on that one. I am continuously cursing my fat fingers using my phone and wishing I had bought one with real buttons (but then the screen would have been too small and I would have been cursing that).  As far as I can see the main advantage of touch screens is miniaturisation , not an improvement in control.  
 
I will however go to Windows 8 when I get a new DAW, just so it current and hopefully more future proof, but I don't think I would bother to upgrade a DAW already running Win 7.
 
In the meantime Vista 64 is rock solid for me even though a lot of the software I am running is "not compatible" (X2, NI Komplete 8, BFD Eco etc.)

ronkenobi


i hope all the other updates only runs with win 8
the first thing for all pc users is to update the OS !!

Thankfully that is unlikely to happen for a while.

aka

Why is anybody still using XP? :)

It was clunky, had horrible hardware/software issues, was unreliable, had a habit of self destructing and if you pushed it 'hard' needed re-installing every 6-8 months.

I have never had these problems with XP, but I was late coming to it (2006), so maybe the bugs had been ironed out by then.  Your description fits with my experience of Windows 2000 though.  I used to reinstall it every few months.

My current DAW PC is dual-boot with XP and W7.  Exactly the same hardware and software is installed in both setups and there is no obvious difference in performance.  I don't see what all the fuss is about really.

Interesting that "Win95/98/ME get a mention in this thread, but the best MS operating systems of that period, NT4 and 2000, don't.

NT4 was very good in its day - the Win95 style interface but with security, decent multi-tasking and reasonable crash-resistance. NT4 was the foundation for XP onwards far more than the Win9x series was.

tlw

Well, large parts of the UK's government and civil service still use XP on workstations/laptops. So do many private sector companies. 

In a production environment, stability and user familiarity with the interface are very, very important, and there may be thousands of computers to manage.

Indeed.  The local govt organisation that I used to work for were still using W98SE as late as 2004.

daveny5

I'd rather use Vista (on a machine designed to run it) than XP!

Not me. Vista was the worst piece of junk that ever came out of Remond, WA. 

Actually, that would be Windows ME. :)

nah, buy yourself a copy of win8 it blows 7 out of the water!!!!

example using the same machine

render of 3D image using Cinema4D (what I do for a living)

Windows 7 - over 10 hours
Windows 8 - just under 6.5 hours

tlw


Interesting that "Win95/98/ME get a mention in this thread, but the best MS operating systems of that period, NT4 and 2000, don't.

NT4 was very good in its day - the Win95 style interface but with security, decent multi-tasking and reasonable crash-resistance. NT4 was the foundation for XP onwards far more than the Win9x series was.

but NT4 was never intended for home users - that's why I ignored it :)

John


NT 4 was a business OS only without even the barest driver support. Totally useless for a DAW user. For business it was a fine OS. 

that's right John, and as I remember Direct X could not run on NT 4. It was meant to compete with apache I think. mainly server stuff. The combination of SE and windows 2000 produced Windows XP. The partitions changed from the Fat 32 format. Which is one reason XP was more stable then it's ME predecessor.


I have windows 7 ultimate and I can still run windows XP in virtual mode if I needed to. I have not found a need to yet as all my older software has been replaced.