Virtual Machine for Business - Anyone's Experience?

[VaultTechy]

I work for a company that kind of leans on an older program to get by - it's only compatible with Windows XP but it's our POS, our clientele database, basically everything. Anyways, the two computers have been dying for years now but this is starting to look like the final few days/weeks for them, and it's time to move on.

I've called the company that makes our program and they confirmed that it doesn't run on anything but XP, so there's that. I'm thinking my only option is virtualization, which is something I've never so much as experimented with so I've got a few questions/concerns I want to figure out before I jump in.

First off, I know some VMs "wipe" the content when they're done being used, which is not something I want - it's gotta remember everything, closed or open. Which VM software is best for that?

Then there's networking - the host PC (the one I'm replacing now) gave the other PC all it's info via the Windows XP home network sharing setup. Is that still something I can still do? Home share my VM's files and have it be accessible to the genuine XP machine across the room?

Aside from that I've got concerns about peripherals (barcode scanners, fingerprint and keypad devices) that all probably only support XP. How would I go about getting those working on a Windows XP VM inside a Win 10 PC?

Really any advice/experience/links/videos would be great. Thanks again.

 

[James Mason]

VM will do what you want, but if you're the head IT person, you're gonna have to learn alot about VM software and hardware, or hire someone who does.
Or, get the company to just move to modern technology, this may require expensive/extensive manual hand typed data transfer. (hire a lot of people to do it, can't remember job title but it used to be a common one, or pay a bunch of people in india or something to do it for you.)
Either road is hard and expensive, you'll have to investigate the costs of both.

Barcode scanners are pretty simple, they shouldn't need extensive/special drivers unless they're made to only work with whatever software they demand to work with, but they don't all have to, I've got a barcode scanner next to my desk that just plops whatever barcode I scan into excel for me, and it doesn't need any super special software.

Fingerprint readers are another story, they kinda aren't super popular technologoy like they were a decade ago. Keypad devices, i'm not sure exactly what those are, 10 keys? those shouldn't require anything special.

You'll probably want to contact a few computer contractors and tell them your situation and that you're looking to move, maybe investigate modern software that will do what you already do, it may be separate software, but that can be beneficial as well.