About 5 years ago I bought a laptop with Windows Vista Business with the option to downgrade to XP Pro. Because at that time I had quite a few old programs, I thought XP Pro would be best option so downgraded to this.
Now that XP support is nearing its end, I am wondering whether I should go the other way and revert back to Vista Business, as I still have the recovery disk, and this would give me another few years of support.
Changing to Vista would be a bit of a pain, as I would presumably have to reload all the other software and back up all data. Because the laptop is 5 years old, I suspect it wouldn't be a good idea to buy a Windows 7 or 8 upgrade.
Does anyone have an opinion in whether it would be worth upgrading to Vista, or should I just take a chance and stick with XP until a new computer becomes necessary?
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I wouldn't personally go to Vista. Windows 7 would be better. But there is no such thing as upgrading from XP to Windows 7 - it is a clean install. You select custom during the upgrade but this will wipe everything.
If you upgraded to Vista and then Windows 7 that would work but you're likely to leave behind a lot of problems that a clean install would avoid.
I suppose staying on XP depends on what you use it for. Security holes will not be fixed and a compromised website might be all it takes to have something malicious easily installed that anti-virus and anti-malware cannot protect against.
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>> Does anyone have an opinion in whether it would be worth upgrading to Vista, or
>> should I just take a chance and stick with XP until a new computer becomes
>> necessary?
Stick with XP. If you load the vista up, its going to have to download two service packs of updates, a long slow and laborious process, and you end up with a dead end operating system with support removed in a couple of years.
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Many thanks for those replies. I think I will take your advice and stick with XP. I will probably need a new laptop in a couple of years, and in the meantime will accept the risk of an unsupported XP. A 5 year old laptop is probably just as likely to have a hardware fault as a security problem - even more of a reason to keep everything backed up!!
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>>as a security problem
There's security as in your laptop gets corrupted in some way, in which case I agree with you.
But there is also security as in something is captured or taken from your laptop. There you need to be careful and this is the aspect that might worry me.
I think there's enough XP machines out there to still make them a valuable target.
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Linux.... it will fly compared to WinDoze, and no more "configuring updates" page. I do still have Vista, but only because I need it to run the diag software for the cars!
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A licence for Windows 7 will cost too much to make it worth while. The main issue with XP is official support ends in April 2014. My official line is I am still happy to install and repair Windows XP machines but I made it very clear that Microsoft will no longer support it after April and other software companies may end up not supporting it.
Windows Vista is not too bad if tuned correctly, I used it on my office PC until last week when I upgraded it to a brand new Haswell system with Windows 8.1.
I use Lubuntu on netbooks and it is amazing, when Windows 7 starter is clonky and slow Lubuntu performs like Android does.
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Windows XP to Vista Upgrade - rtj70
