From XP and Beyond

This month I’ll cover the rather muddled topic of the “End of XP” and what that means for you as a computer user. I’d hazard to guess that in many of your homes is a solid xp computer now gathering dust. This article brings hope for that XP computer and dispels some of the hype currently being spewed by the technology pundits.

XP Computers

Firstly lets dispel the myth that XP based computers are obsolete. They simply are not. Microsoft may have stopped supporting XP but your XP computer is capable of running other supported operating systems. Microsoft or Harvey Norman won’t tell you that because it’s not in their interest but I will and I just have.

Alternatives To XP

Space prevents me from listing the alternative operating systems available for your computer but I’d estimate some 15-20 different versions depending on your needs. These Non Microsoft operating systems support web browsing ,email, word processing, printing, scanning and virtually all of the functions found on xp.

Costs For Alternatives

All of the alternative operating systems are free but unless you are computer technician you’ll need to have the software installed and configured for your particular machine. Your existing XP operating system and data will not be affected so should you decide you want to run xp on a given day you can.

Cons

Not all printers scanners and add on hardware is supported by all of the operating systems so in some cases you may lose some of the functionality you had with xp. In some cases some hardware may need to be changed (wireless network cards can be an issue for example)

I will expand on this topic in future articles so you might pause before you send that desktop to the dump.

Windows 10

If you have found yourself upgraded to windows 10 from windows 7 all is not lost!

I’m hearing reports from many customers of their dissatisfaction with Windows 10 and they would prefer to return to windows 7. With a little technical help and some safeguards Windows 10 can be uninstalled or if not then the machine can be cleared and windows 7 re-installed. I would not recommend you attempt it yourself as if you have lurking hardware problems these may surface during the process and cause the rollback to fail.