1. I have another Windows XP build, IBM NetVista A30 (fake ThinkCentre) but it was sit down because it was not used. Planning to upgrade them so I can playing old games on there
2. I don't know
3. Playing games on real hardware (IBM NetVista), no emulation as Mau1wurf1977 said 😁.

At home, my primary OS is OS X Mountain Lion, but I use a Windows XP virtual machine to connect to work VPN. (Low resource usage, easy to lock down and keep separate from my personal files.) At work, I have a Windows XP box (same machine from the day I was hired, I chose XP over the just-released Windows 7 - and definitely wasn't going to go with Vista,) as my primary desktop, plus a Windows 7 machine as my "crash box". I originally had VMWare ESXi on it running many OSes, but when I scrounged up a third monitor, I put Win7 on it and moved to VMWare Player for my VMs.

I'm due for system upgrades later this year, so I figure I'll wait for Windows 8.1 and upgrade then. The machines we're getting now can handle triple-head video, so I'll put all three displays on my desktop, and make my crash box an ESXi box again.

Anonymous Freak wrote:

At home, my primary OS is OS X Mountain Lion, but I use a Windows XP virtual machine to connect to work VPN. (Low resource usage, easy to lock down and keep separate from my personal files.) At work, I have a Windows XP box (same machine from the day I was hired, I chose XP over the just-released Windows 7 - and definitely wasn't going to go with Vista,) as my primary desktop, plus a Windows 7 machine as my "crash box". I originally had VMWare ESXi on it running many OSes, but when I scrounged up a third monitor, I put Win7 on it and moved to VMWare Player for my VMs.

I'm due for system upgrades later this year, so I figure I'll wait for Windows 8.1 and upgrade then. The machines we're getting now can handle triple-head video, so I'll put all three displays on my desktop, and make my crash box an ESXi box again.

check out parallels sometime it has GPU acceleration.

Those net vistas have nice Pentium 4 coolers or at least i like them because they mount easily.

cdoublejj wrote:

Those net vistas have nice Pentium 4 coolers or at least i like them because they mount easily.

Yeah, but I got trouble to installing them after I removing them for a while 🤣

I want to using FX 5600 on this PC in later year because I am hiatus at retro PC hobbies in order to more focusing at upgrading my PC

Windows XP (and 2003) until the end.

I've tried Windows 7 but I really don't like it. The GUI is much inferior to Windows XP/2000. It lacks much customizability that XP had. Plus it just feels kludgy, badly designed, and poorly programmed to me.

Also, Windows 7 has been buggy for me. I've been getting crashes much more frequently then with XP, which I can't allow.

I've tried Linux too, but it has a whole share of massively serious problems that Linux developers and users don't want to admit exist. Either that, or they're just figuring out about about them now.

I don't like modern Windows. I admit I'd still be using Windows 2000 if devs hadn't decided to drop support.
The exact same thing will happen to ALL of Windows NT 5.x. After that, ReactOS is our only hope.
Maybe Linux if they fix their problems (which doesn't seem likely).

cdoublejj wrote:

check out parallels sometime it has GPU acceleration.

Yeah, that's what I use at home on my Mac. But my primary use of Parallels doesn't need GPU acceleration (VPN connection to work, plus various server OSes.)

At work, my "crash box" is purely for server OSes, so ESXi is perfect. (Plus I can link it in to our vCenter server for centralized management.)

Actually Windows XP has not the retro feeling to me yet. This is probably due to the fact that it is still in use at places where you can''t easily upgrade (no drivers for measurement equipment f.e.). So in these fields it will still be in use for at least the next 10 years.
While my main system at home is on Win7 already, I still have an older PC where it doesn't make much sense to change.
It is a
Athlon XP 3200+ - late 32 bit only CPU, however newer 64 bit capable CPUs would do 32 bit as well.
nForce2 chipset - USB2, SATA2 compatible
Geforce 6800GT - sufficiently fast for the Athlon, SM3 and supports palette based stuff
Voodoo5 5500 PCI - Glide
SB X-Fi
some HDDs, DVD burner etc.
This covers the Windows XP age very well. For the late stuff like Bioshock f.e. this system can be a bit too slow in certain scenes. But those games are also compatible with Win7.

valnar wrote:

I myself keep XP alive in MS VirtualPC and VMware images, as well as dual-boot my main rig to WinXP.

I don't know how you're keeping XP alive for gaming in MS VPC because VPC only supports an emulated S3 Trio video card with no 3D functionality. If the games you are playing don't require 3d acceleration, DOS is probably going to be the better OS for running those games.

sliderider wrote:

I don't know how you're keeping XP alive for gaming in MS VPC because VPC only supports an emulated S3 Trio video card with no 3D functionality. If the games you are playing don't require 3d acceleration, DOS is probably going to be the better OS for running those games.

I don't game on VPC.

I kept using Windows 98SE for the longest time (up until 2005 I think) just because it ran screamingly fast on my Athlon XP 1700+ and I was still using a couple of DOS apps regularly. When more and more applications started complaining about not being 9x compatible I finally caved in, got some more RAM and switched to XP. The stability of the NT kernel was well received and things got powerful enough to run legacy apps on emulation. Never cared for those 'unattended' versions full of useless eye candy which people seemed to like, I rolled my own slipstreamed SP3 CD tweaked for speed. I skipped the whole Vista fiasco, and even though I once got a serious malware infection just by browsing Google Images (and the anti-virus did absolutely nothing) I learned to love XP. Even after all these years it doesn't feel obsolete, it covers most users' computing needs without getting in the way.

In 2010 I built myself a budget Athlon 64 X2 4000+ based rig with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 400GB SATA HDD and an EVGA 7800GTX (most parts I had lying around as leftovers from repairs and such) to replace my aging but dependable Athlon XP based main PC. Since I jumped on the 64-bit dual-core bandwagon I decided to try this Windows 7 OS I kept hearing good things about. I ran XP and 7 x64 in dual-boot for about a month to evaluate which one to keep, and I ended up choosing Windows 7. It felt just as fast as XP, with a few simple tweaks I could get it just as I liked, Aero Glass looked nice without being tacky or bogging the system down, and all the other improvements were really appreciated, especially the search box on the Start menu I now depend on. Windows 7 works perfectly for me and with current systems lasting longer I'm all set for a pretty good time.

I still run XP on my netbook (Asus Eee PC 1005PE with 2 GB RAM) because even with an SSD Windows 7 feels sluggish on it, and on a couple of older systems such as my mom's Dell Optiplex GX260 (P4 2GHz 1GB RAM 80GB HDD) which does everything she needs (and upgrading the DDR RAM would be kind of expensive now) and also an LGA775 3.2 GHz P4 box I built from spares for more 'legacy' stuff (like serial/parallel hardware interfaces that only work right on 32-bit OS or my eDimensional 3D shutter glasses). Those systems will continue to run XP for the foreseeable future.