I am getting so tired of the negative connotations that go along with a piece of software getting "old". Mass media is winning the masses over with a bunch of BS about "you need the latest and greatest" and all that crap. I especially love mobile phone commercials that exaggerate so much by showing some guy using an old 80's brick cell phone and some douche bag using a iPhone or whatever, and they make the guy using the old phone look unnecessarily stupid and the guy using the new "smart" phone look "cool". Even if a guy was that old school and really wanted to use an old analog phone like that, you wouldn't even be able to due to lack of the support from telecommunication companies (in most places in the world now) that we're slaves to. I remember using my Mortorola StarTAC mobile phone as long as I could and had to give it up because my local provider did not support it's analog function anymore. My phone did all I really wanted it and needed it to do...I really did not want to switch phones at that time, but I was forced to because of the lack of support. I of course eventually wanted to upgrade to a better phone that I could use for texting, but I wanted to do it when I wanted to, not by being forced to. Case and point....I now have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 that forces me to update my Android software (the notification won't go away until I update) as opposed to my older blackberry phone which gave me the option to decline....I believe that soon no one will have any option to decline any updates for their cell phone or even their PC O/S (unless maybe you resort to using hacked up versions of older software)...that way corporations can have more control of what you use and it will inevitably be easier for them to channel advertising to you on your PC, mobile phone, chip implanted in your brain, or your stupid Google glasses 🤣 .
Does it really matter if you don't have the absolute newest O/S on your PC? As long as that piece of software does what you need it to do and do it well, do you really need to "upgrade"? I certainly don't think so for the most part. I have worked as a AutoCAD draftsperson, architectural designer, photographer, and have had numerous other office jobs where I used MS Office software and many graphics programs and have to say that with most of the work I have ever done, I could get by and get by well with just Windows 32 bit based software running on decent to excellent 2002 to 2008 hardware or maybe even older in some cases. Actually even the majority of AutoCAD and Photoshop software during the Win95/98 era would still serve me just fine today as well. Case and point, I am currently using a Lenovo W520 with i7 processor and discreet video and 16GB of RAM on Win7 64 bit O/S and it still runs slower in most cases (except for 3D rendering and 2D point cloud rendering) for simple MS office software than my WinXP 32bit system with 3GB ram and slower Core2Duo processor and crappy 1gb video card on my home computer.
Even when it comes to gaming, I really think that the 'life' of WinXP could have been extended even further by exploiting more of the newer hardware capability by just making it compatible with older Direct X versions.
It's really funny how people always say that Windows XP is getting old, when most of those people just use MS Word and browse the internet. Even for gamers, Windows XP still has so much to offer. I for one, have not had the time to play many of the games released during the last 10 years and would still be happy just gaming on my XP 32 bit machine and just missing out on the newer games 'optimized' for Windows 7 and 8.
My point is that Windows XP probably fulfills the computing power needs for most people...I would venture to say almost all the people I know except for some avid 'modern gamers' and designers requiring the fastest 3D rendering capability possible for their work don't need anything newer that WindowsXP. It's funny that the only reason I ever upgraded from SP1 to SP3 is because I could not access my iPod I got back in 2008 with XP SP1...I was forced to upgrade to SP3 so I could sync my stupid iPod. I find it really hard to believe that Apple couldn't have made my iPod Touch 8GB compatible with Windows XP SP1 or even win98 for that matter. I find this to be absolutely unnecessary an absolute outrage and obvious planned obsolescence at it's best (or worst).
I just want to make it clear that I am not saying that windows 7 "sucks" or that Windows 8 is plain crap or whatever. I think that many can argue about the good points and bad points of almost any O/S until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how much a person loves an O/S version more than another, we are now facing the inevitability of dependency on internet giants/telecommunications companies with a certain monopoly (or oligopoly) that will eventually decide what programs you will use whether you like it or not (as long as you want to participate in using the internet). This is what should be discussed and questioned, not what O/S is better.
It's so blatantly obvious that O/S's like Windows 8 are facilitating the move to being more dependent on corporate initiatives to control what you are seeing (advertising), have access to your browsing activity and tendencies (marketing data collection) and even now holding your data on the "cloud"...what a load of BS...having my personal information stored on 'the cloud'...are you f'ing kidding me?? I am glad there are still sites like Vogons out there where you can discuss topics like this freely and get free information on how to run your old software, but how long will it last? I wouldn't be surprised if one day when I try to log on to Vogons I will get a message that says, "please click on this link to upgrade your browser and O/S to Windows 9 and service pack 3,654,785 to log on" 🤣 I really hope that day will never come.