It's still ok. 71% marketshare last i checked.

I have XP , Vista, and 7, I MUCH prefer XP with respect to customizing possibilities, explorer file navaigating and start menu design.

Yeah, 7 is a a brand spanking new OS, but that doesn't in any way make it preferable. Design wise it's pretty much the same as Vista with a few new bits added to boost sales imo.

Security wise, 7 is better and if you have a nice fast machine may run a bit faster.

If you are happy with XP, I'd stick with it.

MS will support XP until 2014 from what I heard. I'm still using XP on my personal machine. I've tried 7. It's OK I guess.

From what I've found it runs faster than XP...and I don't mean on my i7 with 12gig of DDR3... I mean on a P4/3.0 with 2gig...;)

XP 64-bits is a steaming pile of bulldrops, and the switch to 64-bits is, in my opinion, completely worth it and best done early. I've heard of many people having troubles with getting the 32-bit version of Win7 to play with their apps for some reason, it appears the 32-bit compat mode of the 64-bit version works better than the "real deal" so if you must stay with the hopelessly outdated 32-bit x86 architecture, stay with XP.

So, to sum it up in order of preference: Win7-64 -> WinXP-32 -> Win2K -> Vista-64 -> Win7-32 -> Applying a hammer to your current computer and buying a new one afterwards -> Vista-32 -> WinXP-64.

I have XP on my comp, windows 7 on my laptop.

Tbh I wish I had windows 7 on my computer at the moment too.

I've been running XP ever since it came out and like it.  Ran the beta and rc of win 7 in dual boot just to check it out.  Needless to say I really like win7 so bought the advanced copy back in June. After receiving my copy I decided to have the best of both so I am now dual booting.  Had no problems installing and running win 7.

So, for those that can, dual boot might be a good option.  Hard drives are cheap these days anyways

i would def upgrade..i didnt really have much problems with vista but 7 so far has been great

I've upgraded both my laptop (4 years old, 32-bit, 2 gigs of RAM) and desktop (1.5 years old, 64-bit, 4 gigs of RAM) from XP (32-bit) to 7 (32 and 64-bit, respectively).  I've really enjoyed the change.  Since it's a little different from good old XP, it's still taking me some time to figure out all the tweaks I want to make to the system, but it's behaved quite well so far.  I like a lot of the little changes they made.

I also agree with the aforementioned dual boot option.  My desktop still has XP on the other HDD, just in case.

I think the worst thing is that my work computer still has XP.

Try running Photoshop Cs3, SKS, Movie Gear and C4D.

XP is vastly more responsive on my dual core 3.4 w\ 3 gigs ram.

So if I'm running a centrino laptop with 2gig ram, and have no new hardware(all manufacturer supplied with the laptop) I shouldn't have issues with 7 not being able to work with my present hardware?

That's my biggest reason for not upgrading at this point. I have a chance to install 7 (haven't asked yet if it's an upgrade or a full install) but remembered all the issues xp and vista had with older hardware in the beginning

Printers and tv tuners.  They cause issues every release.  Everything else is usually pretty well covered.  You can install Vista drivers in many cases where 7 drivers aren't available.

Thanks Savyg,

I'll consider installing much more seriously now.

Yes, the loading time of Photoshop would make a good comparison, XP to Win7 .

And how convenient...I have 2 drive caddies for that machine...one with XP Pro and the other with Win 7 Ultimate...both 32bit.

What say I get out the olde stop-watch and see....;p

BTW....less than 4 seconds on the i7 ...;)

My HP printer and Avermedia TV tuner card both installed correctly in Win 7 (Home Premium x64), and both function as they should.  In fact, Win 7 detected them both and installed the appropriate drivers during installation.... all I had to do was install the software to access the GUI and various functions of each.

I didn't mean to imply that all of them have issues.  Only that some do, and those device categories have always had the biggest number of complainers from the boards I've checked out in the past.

On that note, I haven't seen those complaints wrt Win7, but I haven't really been looking terribly hard either.

I got my upgrade free when I bought vista for my new comp that I put together over the summer. So far I like it a lot better than vista, but if it wasn't free I wouldn't get it.

If you aren't having much trouble with vista, then windows 7 just gets you a nicer ui and a few gimmicks (quite a bit nicer, but just the ui is not worth more than 20 bucks or so).

However, I don't know enough about the technical aspects to say whether there's more to it than that.

I'm running a 1.6ghz AMD procesor, 2gb ram, nvidia geforce go 6100.  Until windows 7, I'd used MicroXP, an extremley lean hack of Windows XP.  I'm now using windows 7 ultimate.  Love it.  Runs like a dream.  I play oblivion, gta san andreas, tomb raider anniversary, it is all great.  I love the OS. 

I should have elaborated in my previous post that those devices did not install as easily in Vista.  Same printer, same TV tuner card, but I had to manually install the drivers myself, and it took some messing around, I might add... whereas Win 7 found and installed them automatically.

While I had no major issues with Vista, well nothing I couldn't resolve, I am far more impressed with Win 7, being that it is faster and more responsive to use.

3.65 seconds.

The advantage of a TechNet sub is I can experiment with relative performances of OS functioning...on matched [the same] machine....but at the moment the XP is almost a virgin install and the Win 7 has oodles of stuff on it....but the boot times [to end of HD thrash] are 2.35 and 1.42 ... XP vs. Win 7.

To be 'fair' I'll need to retest with equally loaded 'crap'.