[RTTY] QST article about Win XP

[Al Kozakiewicz]

I guess it depends on your definition of "upgrade path".  Mind you, I'm not defending either the article or the guy who wrote it.

In Microsoft Windows-speak, an upgrade updates an existing instance of installed software.

You cannot upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7 by simply updating the installed instance of Windows XP.  You have to do a clean install, which means reinstalling all your programs and settings.  In that regard, an "upgrade" from Windows XP to Windows 7 is no different than installing Windows 7 on an older PC with no operating system already installed. A "clean install" is not an upgrade in the context of how the software is installed.  It's about the process, not the end result!

Mid to large corporations were very slow to adopt Windows 7 (Vista was essentially skipped altogether), so there are a large number of PC's out there that are capable of satisfactorily running Windows 7 that were shipped with XP installed.  My employer - a foreign company that would rank around 200 on the Fortune 500 list - JUST finished an upgrade to Windows 7 (already outdated) from XP last year!   

But I would contend that most of the PC's that shipped when XP was in it's prime - 10 years ago now - would be best left running XP.  And most desktops of that era were not 64 bit CPU's - that was the domain of servers.  Naturally,  the same desktops only supported 4GB of memory, which is the maximum amount of physical memory a 32 bit virtual memory operating system can address anyway.

Al
AB2ZY


-----Original Message-----
From: RTTY [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Peter Laws
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 1:19 PM
To: Gordon Bousman
Cc: RTTY contest group
Subject: Re: [RTTY] QST article about Win XP

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Gordon Bousman <nw7d.ham at gmail.com> wrote:


> Maybe the author, who is an "IT executive for a Fortune 500 retailer" 
> wants to promote the purchase of new hardware but I found the 
> inaccuracies in his article to be rather remarkable.  You would think 
> that the QST editors would take a little closer look at the 
> credibility of submitted articles such as this.

I was going to say "An executive?  Well, there's your problem!" but then AA6YQ (a long-time IT executive himself!) pointed out that the author of the error-riddled article was someone who really should know better since he's behind a popular MS-Windows-based radio software package.

The 2006-vintage Dell at N5UWY runs W7 Enterprise without issue.
Granted, it's a P670 which was fairly hefty at the time (dual Xeons, I think), but W7 runs fine.  And I run ARC780 in the XP emulator just fine as well.

So, yeah, not a good article.

Considering the hundreds of notes by "Ed." in most issues' articles, it's amazing that this made it through unscathed.


--
Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!
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