FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

Just today I had an elderly customer that refused to change his operating system because Microsoft had taken it upon themselves to end support. Yes my customer and many like him do have a very valid point.

The piece below further cements the arrogance of the Microsoft puppet and not painting the complete picture.

Can I upgrade my old Pentium 4 PCs to a new Windows?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... pc-windows

Andy Roberts
"Windows XP support is ending as part of Microsoft's standard software lifecycle, and Microsoft has stepped up its warnings over the past year. But I don't think you should be incensed, because you've had a very good deal. Dell and HP probably paid Microsoft about $45 each for these copies of XP, and if they bundled crapware with the operating system, you paid somewhat less. In return, you have had 10 or 12 years' use, three major updates -- Service Pack 1 (in 2002), SP2 (2004) and SP3 (2008) -- plus new browsers and other free programs such as the Windows Live Suite. However, in the 12 years since you bought your Dell, you haven't paid Microsoft a penny, so threatening to withdraw your custom isn't going to cut much ice.

I'll be amazed if any other operating system that came out around the same time as XP -- Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma), IBM OS/2 4.52, Novell NetWare 6.0 etc -- still gets free support. Apple has not only shipped eight versions of Mac OS X since then, it has dumped PowerPC for Intel chips. The Ubuntu version of Linux hadn't even been launched: it first appeared three years after XP"

Well, when my XP died on my Pentium IV machine, I accidentally rebooted it with a Win7 clone from my Dell Core 2 Duo machine.

Very unusual indeed for Windows to accept multiple Hardware changes. I would say you had a bit of a result there.

I have a Pentium 4 HT machine with 2GB RAM flying running Lubuntu 17.04 a true testament to the power of Linux.

YES, very true. Frankly my only beef now with Linux (which I've yet to even learn), is how to make Windows stuff 'translate', but I've not fully investigated Crossover.

Will not move past Win7 and stocked up on extra purchases of XP Prof OS retail. MSFT will let you move XP from one machine to the next, but you just have to spend 30 minutes typing in the reactivation codes. Worth it.