What do you like most about Windows XP?
Windows XP, released in 2001 is for many people "as comfortable as an old shoe", but why is this and why do people hold this insecure and buggy operating system in such high regard? I was reminded of this today when installing a copy of Windows XP in the new Hyper-V client in Windows 8, a process that seemed to take forever by today's standards for installing an OS.
Windows XP is still in use today across many businesses and even in many homes (not to mention it's still the dominant operating system in countries like China because of rampant piracy that was stamped out with Windows Vista and Windows 7). When the operating system was first released though people saw things differently. They were used to the battleship grey of Windows 98 and, for those who were brave enough, Windows Me. They had gotten used to the stark interface of Windows that had been staid since the very first version in 1985 and why should they change to something that was bright blue and had a desktop wallpaper straight out of Tellytubbyland?
Now though things have changed. There can be no doubt that people love the look and feel of Windows 7. It is clean, crisp and easy on the eye, but it's no longer just the look that keeps Windows XP in people's hearts. So what is it?
I want to take the opportunity to look at some of the way that Windows XP does fail miserably by today's standards, apologies in advance for this. XP was released when the world wide web was still new and hardly anybody even had a dial-up connection. I remember trying to connect to the Internet via my dial-up ISP and it was painful to say the least, reminiscent of trying to load a game from a cassette player on my ZX Spectrum in 1982. When I did get online there was very little, if anything to do there. The web was new, clean and above all else, clean!
I'm stressing clean here because this was the time before criminals found out how to exploit the Internet, and it's users, for their own financial gain. Unfortunately it was also a time when Microsoft had a 99% unchallenged monopoly in the Internet browser market and, as such, the version at the time, IE6, stagnated and has now become a millstone around the company's neck for this very reason.
All of this aside however Windows XP was compatible like nothing else, and to be honest, nothing since either. In order to get my legacy graphics package Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 to work, the one thing I have left and use fondly because nothing has touched it since for power an usability, I have to install it in XP and while XP mode has been brilliant in Windows 7, I have to use the somewhat complex Hyper-V in Windows 8 to continue to run this software.
So what is it about Windows XP that we all love so much? Is it like me, just software compatibility or is it something else? Perhaps the non-glass user interface, perhaps the familiarity with the OS or perhaps something else? Why not tell us why you love Windows XP in the comments.
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In a professional environment it has all the features one needs and lacks al of the overhead one wants to avoid. While I do use W7 at home I wouldn’t like to use it at work because of all the bells and whistles that are just overhead.
Clean and simple, that’s what XP is.
response time and hardware requirements!
XP may be buggy and unsafe, but it is nevertheless fast, logic and still very compatible. There are elements in XP that I miss in newer versions, the classic windows explorer interface, for instance. And the operating systems still get things done, no way Vista and 7 makes me more effective. It’s also minimalistic compared to Vista and 7. Buggy, maybe – bud stable as the wall of China.
for some people, low hardware requirements and good for old computers, reinstalling windows is dead simple.
what i don’t like about it.
after using windows 7, seems like cram to me, but i still can’t give it up in virtualbox :)
“insecure and buggy operating system”? Says who?
I have hundreds of programs installed ranging form payware to freeware. And I don’t get many BSOD’s at all. Maybe 3 or 4 one-time occurrences in the last year? And re: insecure, I don’t have any spyware and haven’t had a virus in many years (in fact the last time a virus tried to sneak onto one of my systems, it was back in the Win98 days and the virus was a Word macro thingy that came from a floppy I brought home from work.
I might be more inclined to upgrade if Microsoft added some real functionality instead of just messing around with eye-candy all the time.
– How about rewriting Windows from the ground up instead of just building on top of the existing spaghetti code that goes all the way back to the original WinNT? Doing this, they could introduce more stability, faster and cleaner code execution and possibly a smaller OS package.
– Where’s that new file system they have been talking about for at least 10 years?
– How about making Explorer more functional?
– How about isolating my applications from the OS so that I didn’t have to reinstall all of them (taking weeks of time) when I did an OS upgrade?
– How about making a true multi-user OS where each user is completely isolated form the others? Right now, users have their own personal files but they share the OS files making it easier for one user to corrupt the environment of anyone else on the same machine.
I could go on…..
I remember WIndows XP constant nightmares like few a day Blue screens and once a month complete system restores. Hard to believe positive replies.
I don’t agree Boris.
Our company’s 8000 computers run on XP sp 2 and we haven’t had a BSOD in the last 7 years.
I run W7 at home on one computer and my last BSOD there is less than a year ago.
Anyway both BSODs (the one 7 years ago on XP and the one on W7) where both caused by software (NVidia) rather than by the OS.
I find Win 7’s push to become more OSX like appalling. The dumbing down (making it hard for “power users” to do what the once did before) and pretty-fication of interface is making the experience less enjoyable for me. The only thing I like in Win 7 is the ability to move apps around on the task bar. I had t5 download a 3rd party app to help make Win 7 look more like classic (2K/9x) windows. I’m not looking forward to Win 8.
I didn’t switch to XP untill sp2 but i have never had a BSOD and it is rock solid. What buggy? I use a third party firewall and anti-virus with heuristics. I have always wondered what people were doing to have so much trouble. Maybe it’s their computers as I have always built my own but whatever, I never have any issues at all. right now there are 148 objects in my programs folder like JoJo there are both paid and freeware. By the way I did the beta of seven and the rc and preordered 3 upgrades two of which i installed and uninstalled. I have spent years customizing XP and tweaking it to the perfect system for me. For those that like seven I’m glad for you but don’t pretend XP is a turd because it’s gold for many people.
Ok, now this is ridiculous… “this insecure and buggy operating system”? I’m using this OS since SP2 was released, and I have to say that my computer was NEVER compromised (security wise). As for the bugs, most of them are in the application that I run, not in the OS itself. Sure, Win7 is a solid performer, but it cannot really compete speed wise with my XP… I really don’t know what’s to dislike about XP.
Yes, most bugs were from third party apps. Every second app required its own runtime system files. And if two applications with different custom runtimes were running at the same time, blue screen was almost a certainty.
I agree that Windows XP had its faults when it started out. But even if third-party apps are to blame, they should not be taking down the whole system. Since then, updates and service packs have turned XP into a solid, more-or-less dependable solution, especially for corporate IT, without the overhead Bart is referring to.
One thing that really lifted my eyebrows though… “XP was released when the world wide web was still new and hardly anybody even had a dial-up connection.”
Really? Because when our family started using XP in 2002, we were on broadband cable. It was either that or ADSL, no-one bothered getting dial-up anymore. This was in Belgium so of course YMMV.
Bart Degryse said it better than I’ll say.
As Glenford J. Myers wrote in the “The Art of Software Testing” classic IT book, “…an error is clearly present if a program does not do what it
is supposed to do, but errors are also present if a program does what it is not supposed to do…”
Windows XP is just that: it does what user wants, and doesn’t what user don’t. All next improvements like UAC and Metro was just fail, because they wasn’t what users like me wanted.
Let’s face it: IE was never perfect, and Explorer and other MS tools weren’t and wouldn’t be either. Many people (and many IT pros) never expected much improvement in Windows shell tools. They just wanted platform, OS supporting plenty of 3d party tools (and games too).
The Windows XP compatibility and unobtrusive nature allowed maximum of it.
All subsequent versions were just decline in allowance and, therefore, in usability.
“There can be no doubt that people love the look and feel of Windows 7. It is clean, crisp and easy on the eye, but it’s no longer just the look that keeps Windows XP in people’s hearts”
I’m confused. Are you saying that Windows 7 or XP is clean, crisp and easy on the eye?
The thing I like about XP is that I can customize its interface to take up very little space and still look good. Clean like you said. I’m all about eye-candy (and to me that would be minimalism which the obese Windows 7 frames have nothing to do with unfortunately) as long as it doesn’t get in the way of functionality.
It took me a long time to fully get used to the weird Windows 7 anti-aliasing / contrast / overbearing whites everywhere, or rather, set it all up to look exactly like it did back in XP, using third party software (as its impossible to achieve without in-depth knowledge of the registry) and unsupported themes that used light greys instead of white for window backgrounds. I’m all for crisp; not so much for burn-my-retinas-out crisp.
“XP was released when the world wide web was still new and hardly anybody even had a dial-up connection.” SAY WHAT?!
XP with SP2 put an end to BSODs if you avoided NVidia drivers.
What I really like about XP is that I can clean and align the heads in my workhorse HP 6940. These functions are no longer available in Win7’s drivers, verified by HP… “no workaround.”
i was able to get rid of the Teletubby wallpaper, balloons, and other junk very quickly. Since then, XP has run everything I’ve put on it; commercial to freeware reliably and with few, if any problems. I will be keeping it on my personal machine. All I can see from W7 is more bloat and more resources diverted to flashy crap that has no bearing on my getting work done. For that, I will still have to add third-party programs and hope for the best. And I am paying attention to this because one day I will go to my office and the Mordacs at my company will make good on their threat to push W7 onto my machine overnight.
I never had security problems with xp and in over ten years of heavy use I had only one crash. On the other hand I am using Win7 for 6 months and already had to re-install once (crash caused by a program I downloaded from Ghacks!) – so much for the more secure system!
Windows 7 added a cleaner look but not much functionality. Win7 also did not fix some big problems such as the explorer, which still sucks, and even added some problems such as backward compatibility and DRM. Windows also had all kinds of stupid and unnecessary design changes (such as the explorer).That’s not what you expect from an expensive, shiny, new OS.
XP was a system built for users. Win7 is s system that is half for the user’s benefit and half for Microsoft’s control. Win8 will be worse I am sure (for instance, you will not be allowed to dual boot on win8).
I would never have moved to Win7 if I did not get it as a gift, and I am certain this will be my last windows operating system.
Dual boot will be possible on W8, it’t just that M$ will try to make it harder. Nevertheless you right that Windows is more and more about control by M$. So for me too, W7 will – as things are looking now – be my last Windows OS.
the Internet, and it’s users?
You lost me in the first few sentences and in a way this is why I like XP so much: idiots think that what has come afterwards is not ‘buggy’ and more ‘secure’. Mate you need to wake up to the reality that all software is a living thing. It has strengths, weaknesses and can suffer from regressions that degenerate it’s quality the more you tweak it. Let’s look at XP. Having learned their lessons with hybrid 16/32 bit systems by building NT, Microsoft developed Windows 2000 and then XP. Now if Xp was not the third-gen refinement that it is, and they had taken the enormous backwards step they did with Vista under the XP release, I’d be sticking with Windows 2000! However XP was the ultimate refinement of the solid, stable and reliable foundations set by NT4. XP is also lighter, faster and with the most flexible and aesthetically reasonable feel of any Windows to that point. What have we got since? A completely broken and insecure OS in Vista along with a desperate insecure attempt to fix Vista in 7. Note ‘insecure’. All software is and will always be insecure! To claim that a system that has been patched as match as XP has is inherently more insecure than Vista or 7 is highly dubious indeed. In fact it shows your ignorance.
XP is the perfect refinement that has been even further refined over the years. In this respect is like a fine wine. What has Vista given us bug a scheduler that created some mystical higher-than-realtime priority level which rendered it impossible to do trivial tasks like listening to music whilst also using the network card. A more complete ballsup could not have been invented if the best farce writers had been in charge! Add to this a broken butchering of the start menu and messy macified glitzy eye-straining UI for doing ultra simplified tasks like file management. What has 7 given us but fixes to Vista – taking it back to pre-Vista or, therefore, XP – plus more glitz that quite frankly, only the small percentage of mac users want.
I think it’s high time I dismiss this blog given that you clearly display a total ignorance of computing from a non-mainstream perspective. I mistakenly thought you had the ability to see through the latest-is-greatest and drink-the-koolaid trends that infest the IT industry. My mistake, won’t happen again.
Plain and simple – still could drop to DOS – vast improvement over ME – less fancy eye candy to fiddle with – at that time was looking after 20 odd donated computers all low end Pentiums and XP never let me down – but then again looking under the bonnet of any new car makes me yearn for the old carburettors and tuning by ear LOL. Sometimes progress is great but progress for the sake of progress not so great. I used to be a bring back DOS guy when Windows first came out – if I wanted all that graphic GUI etc then I could have bought a Mac ;( Maybe it’s age but WinXP seem one hell of a lot easier to maintain than Win7. IMHO
“why do people hold this insecure and buggy operating system in such high regard? ”
I think it is time to stop the XP insecure. XP isn’t less secure than Windows 7 or Windows 8 where they both got hacked in the pwn2own a couple of days ago, bypassing the laughting stock of the security community, UAC,DEP and ASLR.
Windows was never in the past and will never be in the future, secure, due to Microsoft’s laziness of copy & pasting old code without any security checks, just as we have seen in pwn2own were IE9 and IE10 were hacked using an exploit dating all the way to back to IE6.
2 Anonymous
//XP with SP2 put an end to BSODs if you avoided NVidia drivers.//
There are many other drivers, and I had BSODs in SP2 with drivers installed by 3d party software.
2 Yoav
//I never had security problems with xp and in over ten years of heavy use I had only one crash.//
To be honest, we should acknowledge that XP had many notorious security problems – infamous Conficker worm, other worms making botnets, trojans (including disk-encrypting ones, ransomware), rootkits….
According to MS, Win 7 is much safer (for infection rates), but nobody guaranties that new vulnerabilities won’t be discovered. Also, in out world security comes at a price, which many users don’t want to pay.
What price? You’re being rather cryptic, there. If you mean a monetary price, most of the best security software is available as freeware, including Microsoft’s own. You could pay a premium for something like Norton but it is not statistically any better and is a nightmare to handle for many users since it acts like the malware it is supposed to be rebuffing in the first place.
If you mean a more philosophical price, something like giving up functionality or privacy for the sake of improved security, I do not see how that is true. There are plenty of ways to secure one’s system without crippling it or transmitting everything to the cloud. So what price do you mean?
I agree that with 7, there’s always the possibility that new vulnerabilities will be discovered. All those arguing that XP is less secure than Windows 7 because it used to have significant vulnerabilities are making the mistake of forgetting the order in which causality happens. XP has been in the wild for a decade and patched significantly. It has had its problems, some rather alarming, but those have been largely repaired. Windows Vista, 7 and 8 are nowhere near as seasoned or as patched, so who knows what stuff in the code is waiting to be exploited. It’s possible, though unlikely, that there’s not much, but arguing that 7 is more secure than XP is like car X is faster than car Y when you’ve only road tested one of them.
I love Windows 7 and have been happy with it from the moment I switched. It is a vast improvement over Vista, which on the exact same hardware would crawl and crash frequently. I still like XP, though, and don’t see any significant problems with it at this point. I think I, like a lot of people, am getting tired of constantly being told there’s something wrong with not upgrading. This isn’t IE6 we’re talking about.
I have been using Outlook Express for my e-mail since Windows 95. Since switching to Windows 7 I am no longer able to use it. I don’t want to change my email address so I have had to use my ISPs email service since June and am currently using over 70% of my allowable storage space. What do I do when I run out of space?
Outlook Express *is* available in Windows 7 – its called Windows Mail and you simply need to install it from the release disc as it is an optional program. Unfortunately they removed the multiple identities feature but if you are the only user on the machine then it should not be a problem.
In eight years I never had a BSOD – only knew what they looked like from pictures on the web – except when my power supply started to die, and that wasn’t XP’s fault. Maybe that’s because I didn’t use the OEM version of XP that came installed on the HP computer, but went to Office Depot and purchased my own copy, wiped the hard drive, and installed the untouched MS version.
I love software and have over 100 (yes, I counted) installed. I use them all. Many won’t work on my Win 7 laptop.
My XP system does not take up all the screen space with sidebars that serve no purpose and a huge task bar – which I don’t use because of some of those lovely applications I was just telling you about that render it inessential. (Those applications do not work on the Win7 computer).
The XP machine is set up to my specifications (not Microsoft’s). It is quite beautiful to look at, decorated as carefully as my living room. I love the sight of it and when I feel like doing something more exciting, I change the wallpaper. The Win7 laptop has trouble remembering where things should be and does odd things to the resolution of the wallpaper.
I can run as many applications at the same time as I want – without a glitch. I can size the windows of applications to any size I want. I can find things. I can tweak to my heart’s content.
Explorer was never a problem for me until Win7. I’d read they were going to improve it. HAH! Luckily I have another file manager to use, but Win7 is bossy about things and I’m often stuck doing things the MS way. Not so, on my XP system.
MY XP isn’t and never was buggy. It has always been stable, dependable, and lovable. It has served me well through the years. I treasure it and have no intention of abandoning it for an OS I’m not very fond of.
As for WIN8 – I won’t be signing up to be a slave to MS’s latest and most useless. The rest of you are welcome to all of its limitations and you’re welcome to cloud computing, too. Whose brilliant idea was it to move everything into the public domain? – No thanks, I like my private office.
Another thing people complain about is that XP users have stuck with Internet Explorer 6. They have? I can’t remember ever using it. I use Opera and sometimes FF.
Oh yeah. I had a dial-up connection when Win95 was brand new. So did everybody I knew. And, yes, there were “things” out there, places to go, places to see, and very few bugs.
I had XP for 9 years and loved it. Only 1 BSOD and never had any virus/infections on it, smooth sailing it was. Felt completely in control. Only switched to Win 7 recently due to possible hardware failure in the near future. Now I don’t feel in control any longer, consider Win 7 bloat and don’t need all that eye candy.
JohnMWhite
//So what price do you mean?//
You know, free security software was never perfect. I don’t want to blame it much, but when trying to use it I uninstalled most of it soon, mainly for inability to make it recognize that some files I compiled myself with one toolkit are my trusted files, not viruses/trojans. For many years of all AV my most trusted were Dr.Web and Kaspersky. IMHO. On the other side, I would prefer AVG or Avast to Symantec.
As for price I think of many things:
– user training (and not forgetting of threats yourself)
– installing some security apps (firewall, AV, trojan-hunter, adware-hunter, even rootkint-hunter maybe)
– processing power, memory and time (slower loading times, checks) if you turn proactive defense on
– need to regularly run non-proactive tools
– using permission tools like UAC
– bearing interrupting popups in other defense tools
– updating software (with risk that something stop to work)
– using sandboxing or virtualization
Not all of this is money price, but time and resources price.
So far I wasn’t able to bear proactive defense slowdowns, sometimes grinding work to a halt and requiring considerable memory resources.
Even if Win7 is really more secure than XP – for me it is considerably slower too.
Just IMHO, – I wouldn’t argue if you say that my reasons are not that serious.
I see what you mean now by the price of security, but I do have to say I don’t think those prices are particularly onerous for most users. If running a malware scan now and then and clicking a button to sandbox something is too much, I worry how people treat their homes and property that require security. My machine is far from cutting edge but handles robust security without being bogged down, running Windows 7, and the majority of non-proactive tools can be easily automated, leaving you with very little to do after the initial setup. Not to mention, all those issues would be the exact same when running XP. Or Windows 2000. Nothing really has changed in how one handles security (except maybe UAC, which is annoying for users and too easily circumvented to be a serious line of defence).
support for dual sound card..
Can you run two sound cards simultaneously in windows 7??
JohnMWhite,
may be you are right, but too many IT-illiterate or not caring people around me in my country, that I’m skeptical.
And as for homes – in my country many people don’t have watching or security systems too, just old locks.
As for “nothing really changed” from XP to Seven – I would rather agree, and I’m not proponent of Win 7 or 8. It’s Microsoft who says that 7 is less prone to infections or botnet-forming trojans than XP, but for me it is not crucial argument.
I notice a lot of people are attacking the “insecure” tag, which is one of the original points that Mike Halsey used as a justification for upgrading from WinXP.
Funny, that is also one of the arguments that Mozilla has been using to try to force people on the 3.6 branch of FF to upgrade to whatever the FF release flavor of the week is.
Trying to scare users into upgrading by spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) that your system is “insecure” and some mean old hackers are going to break in and steal your first born child is an old vendor trick that really doesn’t work very well any longer.
So vendors and vendor front men like Mike, please stop trying to scare users into upgrading by spreading FUD.
Really I mean seriously? You can’t ignore the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7. XP was my idea: http://xpwasmyidea.blogspot.com Later versions reduce productivity and usability.
Oh? You’ve certainly been busy editing those sites yourself. I can see your name cropping up A LOT on other sites putting out these same links. Don’t you ever put out different ones rather than your own edited versions?
I recall seeing you in a certain blog and you got smack down hard by a certain person who is far more knowledgeable than you.
Mike Hasley is a retard. Just look at PWN2OWN 2012, your “most secure” Windows 7 crap with IE9 got HACKED. So much for being more “secure” than XP SP3(HINT: IT’S NOT).
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/pwn2own-2012-ie-9-hacked-with-two-0day-vulnerabilities/10621
Just ignore retards like Mike Hasley, a retard that is clueless and stupid. I don’t know why he’s even allowed to post this crap here.
There is no need for name calling here, please be polite, even to those who you do not agree with. We do not want an atmosphere here like the one you find on all those gaming sites where everyone is defending their most-liked game with name calling, flaming and god knows what.
Response time : for example in explorer try to rename a lot of file manually : it’s faster in Windows XP.
When you add QTtabBar for better explorer, supercopier for better file copy, winpatrol to replace UAC, etc you have a Windows XP with better functionnalities than Windows 8 and faster than any other Windows.
With a SSD Windows XP doesn’t seem very slower than Seven to boot.
Futhermore there is a lot of skins for XP that look great…
Seven is not bad, I have dual boot but I still use my old XP :)
@xpclient Thank you for sharing, very useful info.
@Mike Hasley I would be very much interested of knowing what you think (and what MS vision is) about the arguments and responses in the comments, if is not much to ask, regarding OS features and upcoming ones, let alone the security FUD part.
I’ve used all Windows XP, Vista and 7, and I pretty much agree with most of the stated points, hence my main operating system is XP.
On a very personal opinion, XP look is more sober than Vista/7 which is a plus for me. I haven’t yet understand why MS doesn’t offer a built-in XP skin in 7, If I recap correctly XP offers a Windows 2000 like skin.
Insecure and buggy? Pretty easy to make it secure and it’s worked fine for me. Article sounds like the usual hype trotted out whenever MS (or whoever) releases their latest & greatest.
It’s OS of All times.
And so the propaganda begins. So here are my reasons:
1) XP with SP3 is very stable OS and is a pleasure to use.
2) It is particularly good on a low spec laptop.
3) The text rendering on screen is far better than in Windows Vista although Microsoft have done their best with Office 2007 and IE8 to make it as fuzzy as possible (out of the box).
4) I do not like having to manage multiple User accounts just for mine and my wife’s emails. Outlook Express supports multiple identities within the one account. The idiot who decided to cripple Windows Mail needs to be shot as yet again we have an unnecessary changed forced upon us for no reason.
5) I want Windows to allow me to work the way I want to work and NOT how Microsoft wants me to work.
guys guys guys. the one most important thing every one forgot to mension was size size size size!!!!! come on! wher in the heck have u seen 8 to 10 to even 15 gigs needed for a o.s. hell xp could do a fresh install with just under 1.5 gigs! untill today. ms. has not been able to even that up. why the hell does any o.s. need over ten gigs of space! and that is freshly installed!
ok yess? in win7 you can make use of more then one soundcard similtaniously that is one thing I do need in my line of work and I so wish xp had that feature.
ok yes. I have seen file system issues with xp and win7 on the same machine. but stil give me xp any day.
if it wasn’t that my requirements was q bit different, I would stay with xp. believe me. but if any one could pleas pleas pleas tel me. why is all the other o.s.s that ms released after xp so dam big! i would appreciate that
I use XP for old classic games . Newer versions of Windows don’t support such games . Can’t live without CS !!!
Also my PC is running most of the time ( torrent downloads ). I read somewhere XP uses approx 59 Watts ( not sure if this is the correct unit ) and Win 7 uses approx 80 Watts ( again not sure if this is the correct unit ) . XP saves me some bucks :)
I think it’s biggest selling point was that it didn’t make a lot of assumptions about how you were to use it. And that it had been around long enough for most of it’s quirks to be worked out and its operations to generally understood.
Windows 7 is a little more of a black box , with a good deal of unnecessary IMO ‘automation.’ And Windows 8 (especially Metro) looks like it’s gearing up to be even more so.
If you’re more the “don’t bother me with the details” type of user who is generally content to use what you’re given, Windows 7/8 are probably your baby. But for those of us who like to tinker, and tweak, and “get under the hood,” XP was a Windows ‘power’ user’s favored toy.
If you needed anything more flexible and customizable than XP, Linux was your only choice.
XP get’s the job done without any hassle. It doesn’t bother me, it never crashes. That’s what I love about XP.
Windows XP is safer than Windows 7. I feel sorry for businesses that use Windows 7 because I believe it is designed for certain people to spy on your information. At least that explains why the hard drive light never settles down and is always blinking with activity even when it sits idle. Why should anyone care if you choose to stay on XP? When people say things like “get with the times and lose xp and upgrade to Win7 already”, they’re just impatiently waiting to get a hold of your information. An OS is not a car or a house or anything that can physically break down. It can last forever and since it works so well and I’ve spent the last 7 years customizing my XP to my own settings using my own custom iconz to identify files and movie files etc I see no reason to upgrade. I love my XP. It has sentimental value. A person with an old but mint condition car isn’t going to listen to someone if they said “sell your car it’s old…even though it runs well and is lookin good you need to get with the times!”.