Your federal government has kindly provided me with a machine running Windows XP to get my work done since 9 September 2008. Not much sign of a replacement on the horizon. I am helpless to do much administration on this box, not having privileges to, say, install new programs-- but on the other hand, someone else at Fermilab worries about security, firewalls, updates, and so forth. Those shepherds will be the ones affected when XP support goes away, since, I am sure, many XPs remain in their flocks.
This thing is working pretty well to support my spreadsheets and word processing. I am not one of the people running quantum chromodynamics simulations or calorimeter Monte Carlos. And I am glad to have skipped Vista. Unfortunately, it looks like any upgrade I may get will have missed the Windows 7 train, so if I get a new machine it will probably be running 8. I have not heard good things about 8. Still, I learned to use punchcards, so I can probably learn to use Windows 8.
Oh, man, FORTRAN cards. My first, too. A couple of years ago, the daughter of a friend got married in England, but had a reception back here in Chicago. The invitations were printed on the back of punch cards. I asked, "Where did you find punch cards?!" She calmly replied, "eBay."
I heard a report from the IT folks for the local school district at Monday's Board of Education meeting. It seems they just finished a survey, and discovered they have just a few more XP machines in service than they thought - 800+ more, and the majority of them in the high school. The good news is around 250 of them are upgradable. The rest will need to be dealt with Real Soon Now, which isn't something that had been budgeted to happen this year. I don't envy them the job in the next several months.
OS X Mavericks anybody?ext_1749925January 29 2014, 01:21:39 UTC
Meanwhile, as Microsoft announces "end of life" on Win XP, Apple is making their latest version of OS X (Mavericks) available as a FREE upgrade for ALL Mac users -- assuming your hardware is capable of running it.
Imagine if Microsoft made WIn 7 or Win 8 or whatever available for free just to get everybody off of XP....
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/16/microsoft_xp_security_updates_extended/
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This thing is working pretty well to support my spreadsheets and word processing. I am not one of the people running quantum chromodynamics simulations or calorimeter Monte Carlos. And I am glad to have skipped Vista. Unfortunately, it looks like any upgrade I may get will have missed the Windows 7 train, so if I get a new machine it will probably be running 8. I have not heard good things about 8. Still, I learned to use punchcards, so I can probably learn to use Windows 8.
(At home, I curl up with my Macbook or my Ipad.)
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A couple of years ago, the daughter of a friend got married in England, but had a reception back here in Chicago. The invitations were printed on the back of punch cards. I asked, "Where did you find punch cards?!" She calmly replied, "eBay."
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Imagine if Microsoft made WIn 7 or Win 8 or whatever available for free just to get everybody off of XP....
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