I need a new box soon. I'm running Alibre on a W2K box that is 8 years old and on a laptop that has XP. The W2K box seems to be stronger likely due to the graphics card in it.
Some addons to Alibre don't work on W2k.
Anyway, XP looks like a dead end, W2K loses patches in June 10 so I got to move on. Besides, I need to reploy the w2k box as a linux box running EMC2.
So, does anyone have experience with Win 7 pro or Win 7 ultimate with the XP compatiblity option? For those that don't know what I am taking about, it is basically a method of hosting two os's at a time.
If you understand VMware, you have an idea about what XP compatability mode. The difference is you don't have to pay for vmware or buy an XP license.
The apps I'd like to keep running include,
Autocad R14 Mech Desktop 2.01 Autocad LT 2004
Plus whatever other stuff that runs on W2k and XP. I doubt Marv's stuff is 64 bit ;)
Oh, Win 7 32bit or Win 7 64 bit? What are the trade offs?
Don't know about your specific case, but the "virtual" box that MS has offered has some very serious drawbacks. Don't have 7 yet, so don't know if it applies. The one MS has takes the lowest common denominator approach, they emulate a low-end video card, no acceleration, system hardware isn't directly accessible or isn't accessible at all like USB ports, limited file sharing and you really take a performance hit with the emulation. For a lot of things, these either don't matter or don't matter much. I make use of the Virtual PC app for checking out custom boot disks, patches, other OSes and the like and for that it works well. Old DOS and Win95-98 games don't play well, forget anything that uses dongles or serial ports. Since the XP mode is just an extension of the Virtual PC, I'd expect the same would be true of that. Oracle has a free download of a virtual box that's a lot better, more of a beta right now but shows a lot of promise.
There are some real up-sides to virtualization, you can keep a copy of the initial install file, if your working copy gets infected or crashes, you can roll out a new copy in seconds and keep going.
As far as 32-bit vs 64-bit, a lot depends on what you want and what you are doing. If you've got legacy hardware, chances are there are no drivers(might be no Win 7 drivers period) for 64-bit. If you're going all new and shiny, 64-bit may be the way to go. No legacy stuff, though, it just flat works differently. You can use a lot more memory than the 3+ gigs that the 32-bit stuff is limited to. Be prepared for problems like the early days of XP, purchased software may be buggy, might not work as advertised, you may have problems with drivers and hardware availability. Might take a few years to work out, just like XP. 64-bit hardware will run 32-bit software with no problems, for the most part, in fact, I don't think there's any Wintel hardware out there that's new that isn't 64-bit. Don't expect vintage OS drivers to be available for it, though.
XP will still be in serious use in 10 yrs. Far far too many people have no interest in spending the money on the heavy duty hardware needed to run 7, and the problems with upgrading to new software, both financially and physically.
And Id suspect that even more "clones of xp" will be showing up.
How about running a dual boot system, XP and win7 on one drive. Select the OS at boot. Frys has 1TB drives for arround $100.00. I have been running such a system since last october when 7 came out. I get to learn win7 and still keep XP for real work.
Gunner Asch on Thu, 27 May 2010 16:10:25 -0700 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
And psychically. I've a "new to me" laptop, with Vista on it. Supposedly upgradeable to Win-7. Maybe, but I don't have the cash. And the longer I wait, the more I get it "configured" tot he way I like things, which means the more I have to unlearn if I upgrade. Meanwhile, I've a problem with the old iron - the USB ports all "died" last winter. Rather than mess with reinstalling Windows, just bought a USB card. But it's losing functionality. Do I back up everything and see if a reinstall "fixes" the USB ports? Or just get a another card ... or ignore it till I have too? I'm leaning to "ignore till I have to, and just do both boxes at the same time" - in another five years or so....
As far as the USB ports dying, I'd boot a copy of linux from a dvd or cd to test the ports. I'm having a brain fart and can't remember what flavor of linux I use when I need to use linux to data scrap a windows machine.
Thank you Google, Knoppix, that is the one. I keep some ancient versions around to deal with ancient pc's.
I see that 'Lucid' Puppy was released recently. I'll have to give it a try. I just picked up a free dual processor Dell 4350 rack mount server with no OS. I want to install Apache on it.
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