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.
