End of XP
No, no, no. Whatever you do, avoid migrating to Windows8, find a copy of Windows7, Linux, anything. Win8 has cost me two new notebooks. Bit the bullet and bought last week for about £300 a new Toshiba Satellite with Win8 pre-loaded for my partner's 61st birthday. As she has never seen any of the comments on El Reg regarding Win8 she didn't have any pre-conceived ideas. Nonetheless, after about 10 minutes of use she was going to chuck it out of the window - and before anyone clever out there says RTFM there was no fscking tutorial offered on start-up. Having been forewarned by El Reg commentards, I wanted to see the tutorial regarding hot-keys and the like - none to be had. TIFKAM is as bad as everyone said - it is terrible. And that two screen nonsense - meh!
Anyway, went and got an Asus notebook with a slightly bigger screen and Win7 pre-loaded for £25 more for her and kept the Tosh for me thinking that I could wipe off Win8 and load a copy of Win7Ultimate that I bought a while back thinking of downgrading to XP for playing games (all I need it for). D'oh. No Win7 drivers available for the Tosh!
The solution has been to buy Start8 - TIFKAM gone!! I'm now happy in that I have some semblance of XP in functionality and she's as happy as Larry on hers.
Yes, yes, I COULD have just loaded ClassicShell or Start8 on hers and saved money but my existing PC is an old third-hand Dell Optiplex that's getting a bit old in the the tooth and needs replacing. Might give Linux a try on it eventually.
Good luck to those who need to move off XP :(((