I guess I need to see where the technology is at in a few months. From previous experience, the new Win8 128bit OS will be out as soon as I get it. I made a theoretical PC at that website someone suggested for around 10K. It would be nice if there was a website somewhere that noted in simple terms exactly what is worth putting in a computer and what is useless at this point. 

I'm running XP 32-bit as well. Can't be arsed to seriously move on to Windows 7, there's just no point. If there's a game supporting only win7 64-bit, then there is one reason and then I might switch.

This is the truth.

Good info, thanks. I will take this into consideration.

I am currently using Windows XP Pro x64 Edition. I'm kind of a die-hard XP user, and XP x64 gave me nice things like 64-bit address space, Storport storage driver model, and GPT data volume support for my large RAID-6 , so it's features which I all use, that's kind of the maximum I can get out of XP.

I even use it with quite modern hardware, i7 980X, 24GB RAM, an Intel 320 SSD with my system partition properly aligned to 1MiB (and TRIM on XP using the Intel SSD toolbox) and even two GTX 680, because I need a lot of rendering power for my 2560x1600 resolution.

It's really astounding what kind of hardware still runs perfectly fine with XP x64, like my Logitech G25 racing wheel, the X58 chipset, X-Fi, GTX 680, SSD, 3ware 11TB RAID-6 and so on.

Of course XP is dying, there's no denying that. But I'm going to use it as long as I possibly can, since I just love the OS (as much as I love Debian Squeeze).

By the way, does Rebellion run on XP?  

Ditto. I use XP and see 3.4gig of ram out of 4gig. I have had no problem with any program or game to date.

Vista was a joke and can't see myself updating to 7 anytime soon....and definately skipping 8.

Win 7-64 just doesn't give enough to make the swap worthwhile. To upgrade, gotta buy the OS, Office, and more RAM. There goes $600. For what? I can still do anything on my current machine. The worst part is that I send back any docx file I get and tell the person to save in the proper format...which it CAN do....it just doesn't default to doing it....but that's mostly a stubborn thing as googledocs fills in nicely.

On the other hand, I'd be losing my gaming collection from 1992 and forward. That's alot of games...a lot of classics...which also includes my personal top 10 games EVER made to date and still play often.

In conclusion: Is spending $600 worth losing all that? Nope.

Sure, MS is going to stop extended support of XP soon....they're cutting off 1/3 of their market. ...yeah....that's good business. It ain't happening...MS will still support XP and may even patch for XP-64 when they find out that most people just aren't interested in spending the extra doe.

Cheers.

Office 2002 still runs just fine on Win7... just how old of a version do you have now? And if you've already got 4GB, you have plenty enough memory to run Win7.

The thing about Win7: it offers me nothing I want intrinsically within the OS.  It consumes more RAM than WinXP, and there are no games I can think of that require it.  All the apps I use that I enjoy have WinXP versions.  So WinXP remains on my main machine.

Yes, WinXP is old.  Is that a negative?  Only when app and game development ceases to include it, to the point where the user feels they're missing out on more than they would if they retained their current OS.  Otherwise, age is neutral.  Will I eventually move on to Win7 or its successor?  Certainly.  But not now.  Probably not for a couple of years, at least.

unfortunately window HATE involves such a huge and quantum change of user interface that is non-intuitive that it would be a lot easier to move BACK to command prompt dos than go to window HATE, and yes I DO remember the issues of pure command prompt ie EXACT spelling of commands AND their options/switches, and if a single error then totaly un-informative error messages.

harpo

I5 8gb ram Nvidia gtx 460 1gb WIN 7 64 bit ultimate

phenom II 4gb ram Nvidia gtx 460 1gb WIN 7 64 bit ultimate

athlon 64 x2 2gb ram AMD 4770 512 mb WIN 7 64 bit home premium

2 HP laptops 4 gb ram WIN 7 64 bit ultimate

I'd buy tens of copies of Windows 8 at that price but I only need it on one computer!  (maybe two)

People who keep saying how their winxp is running fine and everything else runs on it, should bear in mind that is because other game producers keep lobotomizing their games to run on 32 bit xp the same way a FE is probably going to be.

I'ts a vicious circle that needs to be stopped. People stay with xp32 so game manufacturers compromise their games down to that level, and then of course people can say xp is running everything fine and stick with it. Round and round we go.

64 bit windows and hardware have been out for far too long considering the amount of native 64 bit apps. Windows made 64 bit OS available way back in 2003.... 9 years ago. About time developers stopped cowtowing to people who want to run antiquated OS's.

It boggles the mind what were Miscrosoft thinking releasing 32 bit W7. Could they not simply have refused an upgrade path for people with 32 bit machines? Silly question for a corporation where making money is the only consideration I guess.

Let the 32 bit dionosaurs suck it up and play WOM or get a modern OS and stop holding the rest of us back 10 years.

Greed or survival. Even if going 64 bit only means cutting out only 10% of your customer base. Your production costs are the same and you get 10% less revenue. That'c coming straight out of your bottom line. Something that might have turned a 10% profit before (that's not bad) could now only break even (that's very bad) and thus would no longer be viable financially.

I wouldnt say Vista sucks and I wouldnt say XP is great, but you should probably be a little ashamed of yourself if you're shaking your head at XP users. The graphics card Ive got in my tower has been in there for four years+. Why havent I ever upgraded it? Because it still works perfectly. I run Vista 64bit (pro or home premium or whatever), and my newer laptop runs Windows7 64bit.. and you know what? I can't tell the difference apart from the shiny desktop. And the menus are moved around.  Maybe XP was just situated nicely between old old games and newer games, but I can't think of any game or program I own that it won't run. And it's cheap, because I already own it.

I'd like to see you guys do more, obviously, and upgrading is inevitable.. but I don't understand the mentality behind pressuring people to upgrade. Not just OS's, but all components you talk about someone tries to put pressure on you to swap it out for a newer one. I'd be pretty pissed if there was a new bioshock that almost arbitrarily required DX 11 to function and I had to replace my perfectly excellent graphics card to play it, because the card reached some imaginary milestone. It blew the doors off skyrim! I care how passe it is?

this isn't all directed at the devs ofc