RIP: Microsoft finally pulls plug on last XP survivor... POSReady 2009 Windows XP has finally reached the end of the road, as the last supported variant - POSReady 2009 - is supported no more. Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 which, as its name suggests, is designed to run apps that shriek "Unexpected item in the bagging area" at shoppers as disinterested staff look on, finally reached the end of …
Have a Windows 2000 laptop that will probably last another decade at least. Not worth spending big bucks for a laptop with a true serial comm port (fsck usb to serial garbage or other lame dongle solutions) when it does the job and because it never goes on the network (doesn't even have wireless lol) security worries are low. For serial instrumentation testing older is often better. The world doesn't always move as fast as people assume here in industry as yes rs232 communication at 9600 baud is still a thing. Be amazed how much stuff you own is made by machines relying on UART.
How does that work? XP didn't get modern TLS protos and ciphers, so it blows up when you try to have any native programs connect to any modern servers. Firefox included their own, making web browsing is still possible, but even they dropped support for XP several versions back, so things are going to get ugly quite soon. IMHO, XP (and 2003) is fully in the same boat as Win2000, and past the point where it's less painful to savagely rip out those old systems immediately and disruptively, than it is trying to keep them limping along.
POSReady got the updates to provide later versions of TLS up to 1.2 and support of SHA-256, etc. Just about the same time parts of the U.S. government started mandating TLS 1.2, as I recall.
One thing they did not get is architecturally-disruptive fixes for Meltdown and Spectre.
this has a good potential for becoming "a thing" but still isn't close to being ready for use by anyone other than an experimenter...
Too bad, because if they got SERIOUS about it, it could compete with windows. Maybe it could sell for HALF the price of Win-10-nic [including new computer installs], support indefinitely, remain open source, and keep the 3D SKEUOMORPHIC look. Who knows it could even run various start menu plugins and skins so that it looks like your favorite windows version, or even "theme" like Win-10-nic for the hardcore 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE advocates...
Yeah, "dream on", right?
When I consider my brief exposure to the world of paid Wine developers, and realized they're just hiring the wrong people due to the project management just NOT having a clue as to who the best people ARE, and consider ReactOS's close ties with the Wine project, I see a likelihood of it being a lot of 'academically arrogant' engineers who are focused on dotting the 'i' and crossing the 't' and using all of the right key words and tricky phrases [like that's who they're looking for], and NOT hiring people who are literally HACKERS that are willing and likely to come up with unique solutions to problems... and maybe work for 80 hours per week on salary simply because it's interesting, and GET THINGS DONE.
[such hackers are the kinds of engineers, as I understand it, that made the Windows OS work to begin with, but not any more 3 decades later, which is why we have Win-10-nic]
But it would also still need patching...
I worked a company that were still kicking out SUSE 7 from 2001 on their new servers to their customers in 2015! Because it is Linux, so it doesn't need security patches! They only switched to an ageing CentOS because the new SCSI RAID controller's driver refused point blank to work with such an old Kernel and the old controllers weren't being made any longer.
Too bad, because if they got SERIOUS about it, it could compete with windows. Maybe it could sell for HALF the price of Win-10-nic [including new computer installs],support indefinitely, remain open source,
But that's a bad thing...Not knowing at what point the support will end is terrible from a risk and financial point of view, you know, the two biggest gatekeepers that you have to get passed in order to get new kit.
> by 2015 i'd lost all hope ...
After ReactOS migrated to GitHub (end of 2017), development pace picked up substantially.
It's doing fairly well these days.
If they do ever begin to complete with MS though, I'd expect they'll have legal and/or hosting problems in short order. Even if the legal ones are completely fabricated, they'd likely be enough to stop the project.
wtf is "Win-10-nic"
A reference to windows 10 as the Titanic. It's a term I did not invent but I nearly always use, when referring to Windows 10, because, in all too many ways, it's like the Titanic, damn the icebergs, full speed ahead! Why else would Micro-shaft continue with the slurp, the ads, the 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE, and so on, unless they were completely CLUELESS as to how much those "features" are HATED ?
"A reference to windows 10 as the Titanic. It's a term I did not invent but I nearly always use, when referring to Windows 10, because, in all too many ways, it's like the Titanic"
The Titanic is primarily famous for one very specific thing - it sank on its first voyage, despite all the hype regarding how good it was. Windows 10, on the other hand, is quite notable for not having sunk at all despite all the fuss about how terrible it is. It's not relevant how justified said fuss may be, or how much you personally dislike certain things about it, calling it silly names to compare it to something that is almost its exact opposite is almost as bad as calling it such a poorly constructed silly name that no-one can even figure out what you're talking about.
"Why else would Micro-shaft continue with the slurp, the ads, the 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE, and so on, unless they were completely CLUELESS as to how much those "features" are HATED ?"
Because as long as people buy and use their products and the money keeps rolling in, they don't give a shit about how much people whine about things on the internet. They know EXACTly how much "those" features are {hated}, they simply have no reason to care unless it actually impacts their bottom line.
Part of the problem with hackers is that they would tend to dissasemble Windows binaries to find out how they work in the first place.
That causes problems with the need for a "clean room" reimplementation to avoid the "copyright infringement" claims that would block its use, and pretty much kill the project.
As you can see from a multitude of posts, it's not going to be the end of an era. Western world folks can afford to keep buying new versions of Windows but out there in the rest of the world many people and organizations don't either have the money or care. We continue to support our software under XP because there are a lot of students in the third world that don't have a choice - we have new versions that run all the way up to W10 but we're not going to drop support for XP - so I still have XP machines running too.
Sure. But they also shipped it as a service pack for Vista. Likewise, Vista SP2 was effectively Win7 SP1. There was a feature pack bringing many Win7 low-level features over too.
Once patched and on hardware that properly supported either OS, they were largely the same. That's what made it so frustrating when people started dropping support for Vista with XP, rather than with Win7.
Sssh - we don't talk about the time that Vista finally became worthwhile. Mostly because we'd all moved on or back by that point.
I heard that it you stand in front of a mirror, close your eyes, and say "Windows Vista Ultimate" five times, it appears behind you, nagging for a license key.
I installed Vista on Virtual PC and thought it ran really well and was impressed. That opinion changed rapidly when it went onto actual hardware that required specific drivers for the devices on the machine. Reminded me greatly of the Windows 2000 rollout and lack of driver support.
Not quite. ME was a stopgap for consumers, a halfway house between the old DOS+shell world of 9x and the modern, shiny, but oh-so-resource-heavy by comparison, world of NT (64MB RAM needed! the horror!)
In practical terms, what that meant was that they ripped out access to the underlying DOS (it was still there but you couldn’t exit out of Windows to it), put in some DirectX stuff... and ended up with an OS that combined all the games compatibility of NT with the renowned stability of 95.
All this is IIRC of course and it’s possible that the years have made me more cynical about it.
Basically, they started with two lines: 98 and NT.
They decided to combine the two, so took all the good bits of 98 and all the good bits of NT and put them together. They sold that as Windows 2000. They put all the other bits together and foisted that on people as Windows ME.
I think the idea was for 2000 to be targeted at businesses and people who generally wanted their computer to work, and for ME to be sent to consumer OEMs and PC World.
It's like people paying £££s at the market, for dodgy, broken, fuzzy, badly filmed pirate DVDs... Like, when good quality content is available legally for good prices (second hand stores!) or free (going to a friends) they'd rather pay cash, for trash.
Reminds me of the movie "Twins". One got all the good bits, the other was not so blessed.
(We could do with a Nostalgia icon El Reg!)
In my home computer*, DOS6.22 was fine, Win95, OSR2, Win98, 98SE, NT4, 2000, XP x64, Win7, Win10, Slackware (2?), Xubuntu 12, OS/2 Warp 3 were all fine.
Windows ME wouldn't boot unless I took out my Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (not exactly an obscure card). ME was different enough to break for me. :-/
*My computer's like Trigger's brush. It's had the motherboad and CPU changed 8 times, the case changed 3 times and the hard discs changed 6 times, but it's still the same PC I've had for over 25 years!
My dick boss though ME was the bees knees and rolled it out on all the PCs on site. As a result I quit and said he was an idiot. Three months later he called me up and asked how to use Ghost to roll out the XP image I had made before his idiotic act. The total and complete twat couldn't work out how to use Ghost as well as doing a network install of Office (and other software).
I used to enjoy working there before he showed up in his bloody BMW and golf handicap that he said was low enough for him to turn pro.......wanker!
"While Microsoft cheerfully suggests that a move to Windows 10 or Windows 10 Pro is in order for POSReady 2009 machines, the hardware is unlikely to enjoy the experience, so those with the devices might be better just swapping out the equipment."
I thought that Windows 10 IoT Enterprise was the spiritual successor to WePOS?
Hardware reqs aren't all that different apart from RAM @2Gb minimum, but any POS terminal made in the last 7 or 8 years came with that as standard anyway.
Tried installing Windows 10 on your average run-of-the-mill laptop with HDD?
Believe me, 10 is a f***ing resource hog.
It's just yesterday that I installed Windows 10 for someone on a laptop with a i7-3xxxQM, 6 GB of RAM, and a rust spinner.
Windows 8, which it shipped with, ran a kazillion times faster than that piece of shit called 10. That selfsame laptop is to return for a reinstall of 8.1 a few days later.
Anecdotal, but in my case, it's fact. I'm sticking with 8.1 + Classic Shell for Windows installs until 2023.
TL;DR: Some modern laptops won't run 10 ... How would an aging POS terminal with a standard-back-then 160 GB 5400 RPM rust spinner run it?
I don't do Windows on my personal laptop (Linux + SSD), but how about others?
Don't tell me to:
- Get them onto SSDs (some really can't be bothered -or- they'd think you're too incompetent to do w/o the extra spending and don't want to listen to mumbo-jumbo justifications, even when dumbed-down)
- Get them onto Linux (you haven't seen the folk I deal with)
- Get them onto 10 + HDD (told you why)
Any other solution in your opinion? 8.1 is actually still supported w/ updates until 2023, so it is secure.
"Get them onto Linux (you haven't seen the folk I deal with)"
lol, Linux. Right, that's nearly as barmy as the people suggesting ReactOS as a solution.
POS software is by and large written for Windows. Nobody's gonna rewrite for Linux and WINE is fine for playing games or doing a bit of Photoshop, but I wouldn't run a business on it.
Linux might be fine for your nan's computer, but a retail business needs to be able to rely on support.
If the tills go titsup on a Saturday afternoon, you can't log onto an Ubuntu support forum in the hope that some well-intentioned nerd is gonna help you.
Linux is fine for running an astonishing amount of the Internet.
There's no reason why you couldn't run a POS system on Linux. None at all. It's a tool for a job, like a Ford next to a Vauxhall. You get them set up right, you can use either for racing, towing a caravan or getting laid.
And if a company offers a POS system on Linux, it's up to them to support it on a Saturday. And if you don't have a helpline for your POS, you're not doing it right.
@Snorlax, I was replying to @anthonyhegedus, so "them" here means "the friends who bring their laptops in to me for a mate's once-over", not a POS.
As @defiler suggests above, it's perfectly sensible to run Linux on a POS.
However, your point still stands. You don't just shove Ubuntu and say your prayers. You would run a super-stable distro that is backed by a support contract and a 24x7 service level, which is how companies like Red Hat and Oracle make money from Linux. And it pays them a lot, in fact, it pays them so much that these have become megacorps from paid Linux support.
You would run a super-stable distro that is backed by a support contract and a 24x7 service level
I worked for a successful company whose POS software runs on Debian - no contract with RedHat, SuSE or any other Linux vendor. It was written in Java, runs on OpenJDK, and they've never had a problem with the operating system that needed "upstream" support.
8.1 is actually still supported w/ updates until 2023, so it is secure.
Well, you might be better saying it can be patched rather than it is secure.
Windows 10 has a raft of security enhancements which you will be missing out (e.g. Credential Guard etc) and a lot of controls which you'd need to implement other software to replicate.
All things being the same, a fully patched Win8.1 box is not as "secure" against a typical range of threats as a fully patched Win10 box.
However, a W10 box is vulnerable to two new classes of threat:
1.) Confidential data mishandling by Microsoft or its third party partners; said confidential data transmitted off the local machine (where it belongs) via "telemetry"
2.) More of a DoS type attack, but it's vulnerable to remote updates from Microsoft (or hackers with the correct stolen signing keys) that do such wonderful things as delete all data on the machine, silently corrupt files, or decide to quietly turn telemetry back up to Max (see point 1 above).
It's reached the point where an insecure W10 machine is any machine that can still talk to Microsoft. Not a good place to be.
So, what I am reading is that you think Win8 doesnt send telemetry back to Microsoft or that you think its normal for people to be able to properly disable this. I am assuming this expands the set of normal users to also include people who dont use any MS products produced in the last six year.
The same with the DOS type attack. This is not a typical range of threats. Yes, they are in some people's threat models but for most users, preventing trivial credential theft is probably a better option.
The reality is that no software is perfect so everything is balancing out one challenge vs another. If the telemetry issue is enough to declare Win10 "insecure", then I'd love to see the threat model that determines any computing environment is not insecure.
Just to clarify, I did say a fully patched Win8.1 box is less secure than a fully patched Win10 box. You may feel that the MS C2 channel means the win10 box is still insecure, but that doesnt change anything.
If they aren't prepared to spend the small amount of money on an SSD to improve their experience of using their computer, why should YOU bother wasting YOUR time refurbishing THEIR computer.
You're basically making your time worth less to them than the cost of an SSD, and I wouldn't sell myself out that cheaply.
For mainstream consumers: Windows 10 on an SSD, or STFU
"I don't do Windows on my personal laptop (Linux + SSD), but how about others?"
I run linux (mint) on my garage laptop , it has 2 jobs:
play music planetrock website
play car repair related youtube videos
its intermittent failure rate is far higher than windows , due to codecs and things
I am not at all optimistic about job 3:
run a blutooth odbc2 reader into a free diagnostic program..
You probably mean OBD-II (the automotive diagnostic port), not ODBC (the Microsoft database thingy).
You can, but I'd recommend a USB one instead (one point of failure instead of two). Read up on the types (especially ELM327 clones that you'd probably be seeing a lot).
As for the codecs, doesn't Ubuntu + nonfree codecs package work? My laptop works fine, even on YouTube, not sure whether I have the nonfree codecs package, but it works.
As for the codecs, doesn't Ubuntu + nonfree codecs package work?
I've not had any trouble with more obscure A/V codecs under Linux either. Think it's been some 10 years since I saw anything outside of what came via the normal package manager.
OTOH, I've had lots of trouble getting stuff for Windows machines, especially some of the older and more obscure codecs out there.
>Windows 10 does seem to be slowing down. Is this an early indication that there will be a Windows 11 ready to fix everything?
It's an age thing, just like those 12 year olds whizzing past you on the ski slopes while you are snow ploughing like a vicar being careful not to get a fracture due to osteoporosis or some other age related condition.
"You need to install windows 10 and an SSD. Or stop using computers"
What a ridiculous comment to make!
I couldn't give you the specs (because I don't currently know them), but I'm using a Dell laptop with Windows 10 with a normal SATA HDD (NOT SSD), and so far, it does what I need it to do.
You have spoken all right, a complete load of ********!
"so typical of win-10-nic fans, to be so smug about it"
...
...
...
"We're actually SMARTER than the average Win-10-nic user."
Pot. Kettle.
"Tried installing Windows 10 on your average run-of-the-mill laptop with HDD?"
Yeah I have as a matter of fact.
What you neglected to notice is that I was talking about POS terminals, not laptops.
I've not worked with a POS terminal since about 2012 that came with a HDD installed. They use SSDs as they're generally powered on 24/7 and don't write much to disk locally.
And even if they did use spinning disks, it would still be cheaper to upgrade to SSD and migrate to Windows 10 IoT than chuck the lot in the skip and buy new gear.
"Windows 8, which it shipped with, ran a kazillion times faster"
Interesting. I run Gentoo Linux on an Acer aspire 725 which came with Windows 8 installed.
With windows 8, it was so slow as to be almost unusable due to a completely inadequate amount of RAM. It was "mostly OK" running Lubuntu.... With Gentoo, (when it's not compiling itself) it's good enough for my needs; web browsing, watching cat videos, writing documents, designing simple odds and ends with FreeCAD. (the latter is an Appimage version, don't ask...)
Good choice ... Lubuntu runs well because it's properly designed with a suitable set of lightweight packages, unlike Windows.
You didn't mention the specs of the machine concerned ... it seems to be an Acer Aspire One 735 with an AMD C-60 CPU and 4 GB of RAM. The RAM is adequate (mine is 4 GB as well, yet runs both W8 and W10 well when I want them) ... it's the CPU (this line compares to an Intel Atom) and the HDD (a friggin' 5400 RPM unit as reviewed!) which killed it. The other laptop in question, however, has a high-performance HQ spec Core i7, 6 GB, and a (IIRC) 7200 RPM rust spinner. Your laptop would probably choke with Windows 10 ... the other laptop barely runs it without lag.
My advice? Get an SSD! ^_^
The difference is night and day, and with the laptop's good size and (probably) good battery life, you need that.
I had to install W10 Pro a couple of months ago, new gaming rig and need DX12 support which W7 Pro didn't have.
One of the first things I did was install classic shell to adjust the look of the shitty W10 UI... Set it to metered connection, installed a few bits of software to help lock it down as best as possible. Find out how to delete and uninstal certain baked in apps. Install the W7 games so you don't have to suffer the ads in frickin solitairre.. and it's now how I want it.. or at least how I can tolerate it.
But F*ck microsoft... they went from making decent OS to a POS because that's what I immediately thought POS2009 meant... Because since 2009 all they've made are POS.
One of the first things I did was install classic shell to adjust the look of the shitty W10 UI... Set it to metered connection, installed a few bits of software to help lock it down as best as possible. Find out how to delete and uninstal certain baked in apps. Install the W7 games so you don't have to suffer the ads in frickin solitairre.. and it's now how I want it.. or at least how I can tolerate it.
Same, but from a corporate angle:
I've seen the results of a W10 default install blocked at the firewall. It's amazing how many different off-site servers and services W10 constantly tries to access. That particular report got the W10 boxen running legacy software permanently firewalled at the edge from both external and most internal resources (including being relocated to a special physical network segment)...and the (quite expensive, now considered legacy since it's Windows only) software they host on a fast track to replacement from a different vendor that supports Linux.
It won't hit Microsoft's bottom line just yet, but in a few years...if everyone starts doing the same...it won't just be Microsoft hurt badly, but also any vendors idiotic enough to make their software Windows-only.
Oops.
The SSD would explain the ThinkPad tablet (I know a university lecturer who has one, and it runs Windows 10 just fine) ... yet the 15-year-old Sony is intriguing ... that's a laptop from 2003! Are you sure it doesn't have an SSD, or at least a 7200 RPM rust drive?
Acer Aspire V3 571G, (i7 quad core + HT, 8GB RAM, 750GB spinning rust) took 2 minutes and 37 seconds to boot after a forced Win$hit 10 upgrade. Installed an SSD, Windows 8.1 PLUS Classic Shell and with all the same software took 16 seconds from a cold boot. Yes the SSD made a difference but at least it wasn't weighed down with all the Win$hit 10 crap and isn't 10 supposed to "boot" from a Sleep Mode loading everything from RAM to make it appear that it boots faster?
We are so lucky that the 1809 update made it out on schedule and no problems. Geez, just about need to get myself a new keyboard after that bullshit.
When the breakins were migrating into my neighborhood a while back I convinced the cheque signer to allow me to change everyone's desktop wallpapers and screen savers to the only slightly annoying 95 set .... Miscreants skipped our unit and hit those either side of us.
Note: full glass frontage and security bars on all units. We don't have blinds or tinting so open for all to see compared to some of the other units.
Made for some interesting chat at the local timmies the following week.
Annon just in case
Why oh why don't companies offer that sort of theme-choice now?
My KDE desktop looks exactly how I want it to and it has "lock widgets". That last feature means that on my wife's laptop, her icons don't *cough* inexplicably *cough* run away and hide behind the cat. Major win.
"childishly coloured" you could change that, you know... [like Win 2k appearance in the start menu]
Whereas, you CAN! NOT! CHANGE! THAT! 2D! FLATTY! McFLATFACE! FLUGLY! FLATSO! appearance in Win-10-nic. Or get rid of the ads/slurp/store/start-thing/forced-updates [particularly on 'Home' versions] without some major hoop jumping that doesn't seem to work very well. 'Classic Shell' and other start menu replacements are lipstick on the non-oinky end of the boar. You still have 'Settings' (since Control Panel does less and less these days) to deal with...
and no 'metered connection' option for ethernet, last I checked.
Having used it daily for over twelve years in my previous two jobs I found it to be a reliable workhorse which did everything I needed it to do without any drama and fuss (although I did change the desktop to Classic mode and set it for best performance.)
As I was providing 24/7 support in my last job I would also leave the machine switched on all the time so I could remote in to access it at whatever time of day and it invariably carried on working fine with no issues, with a reboot every three or four weeks.
Yes it was well out-of-date these past few years and only 32-bit, but I will always have a fondness for it because it worked well and did everything that was required of it reliably and consistently.
By comparison, my former home Win7 machines and my daily driver Win10 laptop have been nowhere near as stable, with the Win10 UI being so messed up that it impedes my productivity most of the time and also tends to need at least one reboot during the day when I'm working from home because the networking breaks for no good reason and never recovers.
Yes, RIP Win XP.
If you work in tech and your productivity is really hampered by Win10's UI then I'd suspect said productivity wasn't that great in the first place.
Actually, from your apparent like of it I'd suspect that your "productive day" involves lots of chatting with Cortana and using Facebook etc. So either you're wasting the company's money or you're going to be automated out of a secretarial job soon. Oh wait, I guess that isn't an "or".
Whereas I work in an IT / engineering job, and most of my coworkers have found W10's UI enough of an impediment that it's actually easier to switch to Linux and use, in some cases, inferior software than to put up with W10. Plus security policy in some places now says W10 cannot connect to Internet due to telemetry, so that can also impede one's work somewhat.
Don't see the issue to be honest. My wife's experimental lab at university has a few Windows XP machines in it because they interface with kit that cost £50,000 and newer OSs aren't supported. Technically, support actually ended with Win2K, but XP works fine for it as well. These machines aren't on the network, so no security issue at all.
Where I work, we have a load of CNC machines powered by a mixture of Windows XP and Window 95 (yes, really) consoles. These machines cost millions originally and they won't be replaced just because the OS is old hat. They are networked, but are heavily firewalled so that only the absolute bare minimum of required connectivity works for them. Again, no security issues with this setup.
Old operating systems are often used to control specialised kit or to run expensive/custom software. So long as networking is sufficiently controlled and locked down, it usually isn't a problem. As it is, I doubt they were using that ultrasound machine to browse the Internet or anything...
I have two laptops that connect to lab equipment where the software insists xp + serial port or else.
The latesr revisions,which the bean counters won't buy, if it even exists, is good for 7 but not 10. Oh what fun to keep things running.
And I expect WHEN you are unable to get the kit and software anymore, and that likely expensive lab equipment becomes unusable, it won't be those tight-assed... excuse me, tight-fisted bean counters that will take the flak.
Replace an excellent OS with a bunch of crap then charge extra for users to stay on the old stuff that actually works.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for Teddy Rooseveldt and anti-trust laws that were enforced. But that's evil socialism interfering with the rich getting richer.
"Replace an excellent outdated OS that's full of security holes with a bunch of crap ..."
There, fixed that for ya...
just WHAT is so "outdated" about XP?
*crickets*
(I do NOT consider the Sinofsky/Larson-Green aka 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE user interface to be 'modern' nor 'an improvement' - and XP could have kept its appearance and UI specifics while the kernel and built-in applications were improved for security, with less effort etc., for another 10 years at least)
Anti-trust isn't/wasn't socialism, it's government oversight [there's a difference]. Banking regulation isn't socialism, either. Socialism is what the OTHER Roosevelt (FDR) wanted, as well as one of the WORST presidents this country ever had, Woodrow Wilson (what he did with income and estate taxes, for starters).
And to prevent thread decay, I'll stop now [after correcting the big blunders].
Exactly. Apple and Ubuntu don't support EOL'd OSes either, do they?
Except with Linux (and Ubuntu by association) it doesn't fuck up your system and your workflow to upgrade, unless you're talking about Gnome Desktop (the Microsoft of *nix desktops).
Windows POS... Aptly named if you ask me.
Besides, I moved from XP directly to 10. The main reason being that I had bought a new mother board which has only SATA on it, and Windows XP does not support SATA out of the box, and the board does not even have a floppy disk interface. So I had to slipstream the SATA drivers onto the install media so I could get it to install. The the other big issue is that the 32-bit became very limiting.
, and Windows XP does not support SATA out of the box
Well, the many dozens of machines I've installed it on seemed to have no problems with XP on Sata. Though that was almost always SP3.
SATA as AHCI - that wouldn't work without drivers... But even W7 had that issue with a lot of boards.
No citation...
Ships generally get what is current, or slightly behind the current for stability and development time, when they are built and then stick with it. So ships running ancient OSs are no surprise.
Equally it would be unsurprising if the the newest built had some Win7 aboard... and downright gob-smacking if they had anything as old as XP.
Curiously this subject was addressed in this venerable publication less than six months ago. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/09/royal_navy_old_os_at_sea/
Dinosaur Edition.
I still use 7 Starter on one of my dinosaurs, also XP SP3.
Still trying to find that mythical BIOS update which enables SSE2, seems to be feasible but changing out the chip
may in fact be required and fortunately it is socketed.
Scuttles off to find a chip puller to see if the one from my similar POSReady machine will work, as its nearly the
same chipset it may well do.
Sound not so much.
(Things may have changed since this was my dayjob but here's my experience)
One of the Big problems of doing a new EPOS system is certification, Three agencies will show an interest
1) Weights and Measures if you are using an integrated scale
2) The Banks if you are taking Card payments (which of course you are)
3) HMRC for the VAT calculation
The weights and measures certification involved us making a trip to the National Physical Lab Teddington to demonstrate our kit with various test scripts to prove we could weigh,claulate and price transactions. The certification at the time was for a 'set' of kit The OS Our software and specific hardware.
.Once certified the package was sealed and you had to show how it could be verified as the tested kit (i.e. our suggestion was MD5 signature on the weighscale module of the software).
OH and don't forget to pay on your way out
(Brexit note it was possible once to certify in an more relaxed EU state but I don't know if this is still possible)
The Banks, Oh Joy; Data protection card protection etc well covered by EL Reg but the practicalities are again similar to the weights and measures.
You trot off to WorldPays offices (they are the only one left now aren't they) Demonstrate your kit, work through the scripts and get a pass or fail. Again you are limited to specific kit so another card reader company would require certification again, Plus when they dream up a new payment method such as contactless you have to go back and certify again.
OH and don't to forget to pay again (a lot) on exit each and every time you pass GO.
Finally HMRC; VAT is easy right price + 20% is selling price. Except in all those cases where it isn't second hand, kids clothing, energy costs, food take away\eat in, Jaffa cakes. Plus how do I round out the pennies. Anyone who's worked with HMRC knows how inscrutable they are .
ME: How do you want me to work this out
HMRC : Show me how you do it now
Hmm not quite right,,,,
Oh and how do you print the receipts ??
ME: (FFS kill me now )
And the final one of course, retail being that great cash generating business You could see the eyes glaze over every time you said to your customers; You'll need a new computer, Sorry you can't upgrade this one it's ten years, old knackered, you can't get the bits, and the memory isn't big enough, so you'll need to spend thousands to be able to take <£30 contactless..
That's why I no longer have that Day Job..
I grudgingly install Windows 2D10 on most devices I don't have to use daily. Because - for me - the kiddy-komputer 2D-ism actually makes it slower to use.
Still no real Aero glass theme (not this Aero-lite rubbish) - and the resize handle active area is STILL outside the box (gets me every time, but maybe that's because I use W7 with the active zone in the RIGHT place (because of the border width) most of the time).
Bigmuscle is doing a great job trying to fill the gaps, but unfortunately not really mainstream.
Rounded corners and integrated borders all started with XP. Maybe we can have an RIP XP W10 version with user-selectable Aero Glass? Please?
"for me - the kiddy-komputer 2D-ism actually makes it slower to use."
Yes, the taste of bile and "bad feng shui" appearance is distracting in an "anti-productivity" kind of way... like horrible paint colors and "open bay" desk farms.
more reasons to miss XP... [I actually like it better than 7, particularly when the shortcut icons next to the start button don't move around and turn into an application icon whenever I use one of them - most hated 'feature' of Vista and 7]
I grudgingly install Windows 2D on most devices I don't have to use daily. Because - for me - the kiddy-komputer 2D-ism actually makes it slower to use.
on MSWin up through MSW7, one of the first things I would change was to outright *disable* the themes service, and go back to the MSW2K interface. But MSW8 and beyond has fucked that up for us.
....all those cashpoints that still run XP in the UK .....
You still appear clueless. You brexit, you pays for it.
Now, go sell some of those cruddy old Nuclear submarines that the UK (excuse me, ENGLAND) does not want anymore
Don't try to sell them to Scotland. Or Canada. We've already learned not to buy any more Britshit.
Welcome to the 3rd world, laddie!
I read somewhere that legendary Windows are made every 8 years WfW 3.11, XP, W7 and it stop there
Full of security holes? Gyaa haha as long as Software are made by HUMAN every new software is full of security holes (even with the help of os-fuzz or rust) until they get it right - patches after patches. Don't hold your breath shouting the newest OS is the most secure OS.. Bullsh*t
The most secure OS is combination of strict hardware design and software, such VMS or MVS.
legacy software back to dark ages (and I mean 1992-), and it's emulation under Win 7 Pro still does. And it will continue to do so. Whether Win 7 remains my interface to the interweb remains to be seen, but managing it well enough to avoid any malware - ever - suggests that may be possible too. It's not a set up for the market chasers, or the security naive, but the savings in time, effort, dollars and endless re-coding with as many learning curves to climb just to preserve the same mathematical models, research data handling, etc. is Incalculable. Software never wears out, and the best is like owning a pristine classic car with zero miles on the odometer, but supercharged by the execution speeds of today's hardware.
Oh, how sad! What next in this dread new century? Now, I suppose that I shall have to install something called a "starter motor" on my old 1938 Vauxhall! BLOODY ENOUGH!
Well - I SHALL NEVER give up my highly reliableXP! Or for that matter, buy some trendy new expensive motor vehicle that has an absurd petrol-burning system called "fuel injection"!
But I have been promised by the expert Registroids here that I may be able to soon convert all my desktops to something called "Linux"! This is wonderful news!
They say that everyone will soon be dumping their Windows systems for this "Linux" by 2015! I can hardly wait!
Wait? um.. what year is this? 2008? 2009? Goodness! I had better hurry!
lol >,<
The ACTUAL minority always be attention whore so they appears like majority, this intensified on interweb - not knowing their ACTUAL place is the real world. Yeah XP is dead (2.29% vs 1.53%) wait what? DEAD? LOL
To my linux friends, please look at those amazing android is that what you call secure? See security by obscurity now? You think linux developer are so much better than the like of Dave Cutler and DEC gang?
Have you learn how to deal with out-of-the-box BACKWARD compatibility as exercised by XP? 10+ years (in this case 17.5 year) maintenance? Security is not just technical but also investment (time and money)
I know of literally hundreds of high value asset transfers being measured by devices still dependent on XP, DOS, Win3.1 and even Win95. The instruments themselves usually use some sort of serial protocol or A-D conversion to serial. One could transfer those inputs onto a new controller given a bit of time and thought... But to have a supported solution generally means buying a new meter and control system.
In short such devices aren't going away any time soon and without a directive from authorities that let utilities spend money, they won't be changed out except when they reach end of life.
Airgapping goes a long way but doesn't solve everything.
Why the hell Windows ends up on any kind of device of this nature is beyond me (mostly $$cheap cheap) - compared to say, VXWorks. Not that the licensing for a proper embedded OS is especially expensive, but software support is.
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