Try an instance of Precise (Ubuntu 12.04LTS). You hear the same complaints on that side of the tracks about Linux/Ubuntu just like the Microsoft guys complain about whatever OS is the latest and greatest. Dear everyone running XP: Your OS was released almost exactly 11 years ago. It is now four generations old, four generations less efficient, four generations less secure and not even in the same ballpark as modern operating systems. I would love to see someone compare XP64 to W7/8x64. To be fair, you probably would not benefit as much from running a modern OS on older hardware as you would from just upgrading everything in general - so keeping XP running on 7-10yo hardware is probably the best choice. That said, if you are running 7+ year old hardware you really have no experience with modern hardware or software so please don't complain.
Running it on i7 2600k and i7 950. Planned for x64 w7 but the reality of it just drove me crazy - it tries to control the minutia of everything. Also no upgrade pathway for programs and settings. Swapped back on secondary machine when I became unable to launch broker apps for reasons never determined. Basically I asked myself the upgrade question: What will this allow me to do that justifies the risks of upgrade. As most of my programs are 32 bit there seemed no upside. I have one i7 and another PC earmarked for 64 bit Multicharts and 64 bit excel, but basically they are data crunching boxes. BTW WinstonTJ, really appreciate your genuinely informed commentary on HW and SW matters.
+1 to staying w/ xp. i'm on a 5 year old comp w/ only 2 gb ram and dual core processor and it's fine. xp is supported til apr 2014. i for one will not even consider upgrading until dec 2013
Bought a new Sony VAIO laptop for the wife with Windows 8 already installed and I can't say my first impressions are good at all. What scared me most after the purchase was the knowledge that the new booting procedure makes it much harder (near impossible?) to install Linux in dual boot or on top of Windows 8. To the best of my knowledge we're kinda stuck with Windows 8 on the new laptop. At this stage I prefer Windows 7 and even Vista post Service Pack 1.
Did you even read my post completely. I have a win XP, win 7 3 month old laptop, and a 3 day old laptop with win 8. I have a droid so your post about running new hardware makes no sense. You make alot of assumptions about what I run and what I know. Sure your IT exp. may be better than mine, but thinking I don't know about hardware I have been in tech sales/telecom for over 10 years that's funny. You claim to be an expert why don't you do a comparison and report back because my real life experience shows very little difference. And everyone I know is smart enough to know that using Linux Mint over Ubuntu is a much better supported. And yes I have run Arch, Puppy, you name it.
Just starting running a dual-boot system with Windows 7 and Linux Mint. Gotta say it's amazing: Mint runs beautifully on my system, only thing I had to install was the Nvidia driver. Good to see that some folks out there aren't going the "let's make our OS primarily for tablets" route.