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Moose |
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Don't make me assume my ultimate form!
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Reged: 05/03/04
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Posts: 1483
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Loc: Outback, Australia
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Re: End of days: XP question(s)
04/05/14 03:35 AM
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As long as you use 3rd party security software which is still being supported under XP - firewall, anti-malware, etc - and you run your browser, etc sandboxed (http://www.sandboxie.com/) then the threats you will face will likely be minimal. Keep backups (I use CrashPlan - http://www.code42.com/crashplan/ - to automatically backup all of my critical files to a dozen places (NAS, external USB HDDs, other machines) .... backups have never been so easy. Anyway, most importantly, don't do anything stupid - executing files downloaded from torrents / email attachments, opening EXE's masquerading as PDFs, surfing the net on open / unsecured networks, etc.
If you want to keep running XP, then I also recommend you use VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) and install XP in a virtual machine (VM). You can then choose whether the VM(s) are network connected or not, and so on. In this way, even if you upgrade to Windows 7 or 8 or Linux or whatever, you can still run XP in a VM. Makes backups / restores effortless.
My main host OS is Windows 7 (64 bit). And I have more than than 40 VM's setup (6 or so are XP VMs for my different work / tasks, so I can keep everything separete just in case one gets hit). I still regularly use Windows NT / 2000 in a VM, mostly only for testing. Also got VM's for (way too) many flavours of Linux. If I was not completely happy with the version of Windows I was running, then Linux (probably Fedora or Mint) would be my host OS.
>>Now, if no security updates are released, then this issue disappears, right?
No, absolutely not. Flaws, vulnerabilities, etc can and will be found within the existing code base.
>>Also, will XP soon be less desirable because of its minority in the market place?
Sadly, yes. All good things must come to an end. As XP's market share declines, 3rd party developers will be less inclined to support it.
Moose
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