fyy wrote:

Windows XP is probably my favorite Windows OS of all time. It's still completely capable by today's standards and its primary insecurity was due to the fact that it came out when everyone was making the transition from dialup to broadband and as a result routers/NAT wasn't all that common and most people just connected straight to the modem, exposing their boxes to all manner of worms and malware.

My Win8.1 computer is connected directly to the internet: no problems.

If that's a problem with XP, then that's still a pretty serious flaw with the OS's security. You shouldn't be depending on cheap routers for security.

I gotta say it.....
All this talk about XP not being secure? In what, way, specifically? All I have heard is how the sky is falling because XP is not secure. No one has ever explained in what way.
Is it really that hard to make an OS secure? They could not fix it?
I really do not KNOW but I have a feeling the security flaws are over-hyped to get people to into win 7 or 8

ncmark wrote:

I gotta say it.....
All this talk about XP not being secure? In what, way, specifically? All I have heard is how the sky is falling because XP is not secure. No one has ever explained in what way.
Is it really that hard to make an OS secure? They could not fix it?

Uh, They have. They've released updates, namely Vista, 7, 8 and 10.

Better separation of user privileges is one of the huge improvements made in Vista (and improved again in 8 ). Better support for encryption is another. Better sandboxing for Internet Explorer, enforced driver signatures, antivirus installed by default, smart screen, better firewall.

You're probably thinking "hey none of these apply to me", but chances are: indirectly they do. The spam mails you get from compromised computers, the sites you want to visit that are down because of compromised computers... The leaks of your personal data by people using insecure software. The amount of money you spend on security problems (if a company has a security crisis, that cost ultimately gets passed on to consumers).

Try thinking outside of your little "I never got any viruses" box and try thinking in the context of: "If I ran a company, what sort of security would I want in place".

ZellSF wrote:

ncmark wrote:

Better separation of user privileges is one of the huge improvements made in Vista (and improved again in 8 ). Better support for encryption is another. Better sandboxing for Internet Explorer, enforced driver signatures, antivirus installed by default, smart screen, better firewall.

Forced driver signing sucks. It hurts far more than it helps anything. That along with secureboot.

Anyway, another reason for better security is reworking the code with more security in mind in Vista. Not to mention that new bugs found still have new fixes where XP bugs won't go away until someone has a 3rd party fix.

ZellSF wrote:

"If I ran a company, what sort of security would I want in place".

"I'd want real security, not a Microsoft OS"

Lo Wang wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

"If I ran a company, what sort of security would I want in place".

"I'd want real security, not a Microsoft OS"

haha amusing but true.
Most servers run Linux -- and that's a good thing.

It certainly isn't foolproof, but it's better than Windows

DracoNihil wrote:

Does FreeDOS try to implement power states at all though? What about DOSIdle for atleast the CPU?

See here: http://freedos.10956.n7.nabble.com/Intel-Spee … OS-td20241.html

Threat closed.

Anyone still running XP has their reasons for running it.

Don't like it? Too bad.