In the time WinXP has been introduced to today there haven't really been enough technologic advancements to justify a new OS.
- DDR2 ram,now DDR3 Ram,
- the introduction of SSD
- A couple of top ranking video cards from ATI and Nvidia that nowadays are in the budget market, being replaced by even better ones in SLI (sort of Raid) configuration.
- The dual and quad core cpu
All of these work perfectly fine under XP.
Another invention not 100% compatible with xp would be Hybrid drives.
They work, but even under Vista in most cases there's no real benefit of having one over a standard HD,or SSD.
The only thing that changed dramatically is the usage of RAM, resources etc. Vista needs more than the standard 2GB; and you're literally wasting around 20% of ram trying to fit 4GB in your 32-bit system.
XP runs fine with 2GB.
Also, people where slow to understand XP was a slightly heavier but better OS than Win98 ever was. The last service packs of Win98 se made Windows 98 a very stable, responsive, and fast OS!
XP around it's SP1 and SP2 got most of the trouble away and functions as a rocksolid OS. Really, programs crash now and then, but never XP. Not in 5 years (unless infected).
Vista probably will become interesting to the public after the release of SP2.
I've been using Vista and XP simultaneously, and I have to say that their SP1 did a lot of good to it.
However, I still find Vista totally counterproductive, battery and resource hog, compared to Vista.
I have little faith Windows 7 will be better.
But there is!
A big issue might be, 32 bit programs designed for Win98 worked fine under xp, and if you're lucky might work under Vista.
I fear lots of them will have no compatibility with Windows 7.
I also fear that Microsoft will fill the Windows 7 with useless tasks and automated programs for 'increased security' which by itself is a trap full of holes. Often I think, doesn't Windows 3.11 with it's simplistic structure offer way more security than latest Vista?
It seems we have more security issues today than we ever had!
Why? because of certain tasks the user doesn't really care about being there doing background tasks, and the so many DLL's that according to MS need access to the internet at all times!
Some firewalls even don't stop these files.. I mean,what the heck?
Who ever said any other file then internet explorer needs connection to the internet?
Update service? Worked fine under Ie. Why do there need to be so many checkups, and system scans?
Windows defender last time complained in Vista because it hadn't done a scan in 3 days!
WTF??? "A security issue, windows is no longer safe!" Lick my ass MS!
I scan my XP system about once every 2 months, and even that is a lot!
On top of a bloodhound heuristic scan (live monitoring) my pc needs a virus scan every 3 days in order to be 'safe'?
FUCK THAT!
There where days I scanned my pc once every 6 months,and kept the virus scanner off all the time. Have only been infected once, and virus scanner solved the problem after browsing and stumbling on a dodgy site.
It's ok if Vista implies all these advanced every day scanning in their ultimate, or professional edition. But in the home edition people can be happy if their system gets a quickscan every month, because that's more than enough!
Not everyone out there is surfing dodgy and illegal sites, and not everyone goes on porn sites every day. So why the hell bother forcing a computer to scan 3-daily?
SHIT!
Motherfucker MS...
Go to hell!