Wow. Just reading a few of these posts makes me realize how old I am compared to a lot of you, and how many members of this forum are pretty young. I think one reason I am not as emotional over the demise of XP is that for me it was not my first operating system. It was only one of several in a long line of operating systems I have used since the early 80's.
I think the first time I used a computer it was when I was about age 7 or so. It was an Apple II-E running Apple Works. Naturally, Apple Works was as primitive as can be compared to what we have to day. In the early days it was basically a monochrome command prompt where you typed commands like "run football" to start a game of football which was text only. Most games for the Apple were text only back then so they were not anything fancy to write home about.
From there, this being the mid 80's or so, I got an Apple II-J which had a newer versions of Apple Works on it. Unlike prior versions of Apple Works this version came with a menu. You would insert the floppy, type in the days date, eject the disc, turn it over and were presented in a sort of Start Menu. All in text of course. You could arrow up and down to various commands instead of type them directly into the command prompt.
From there around 1990 or so I graduated to an IBM 286 running MS Dos 5.0. This is still pre-graphical user interface so like with Apple Works I basically had to type commands like cd to change directories, dir to get a list of directories, copy to copy a file, del to delete a file, and so on. About the only thing coming close to graphical back then was The Dos Shell which came with PC Dos which allowed you to bring up a graphical list of the files and directories on the hard drive. However, as the Dos Shell didn't come with all versions of Dos it was only on IBM computers and not HP, AST, Compaq, Del, etc.
Naturally I stuck with that system for a couple of years, upgraded it to MS Dos 6.2, and performed other upgrades on it until the IBM 486 came out. When the 486 came out I upgraded to it, because wonder of wonders besides Microsoft Dos it came with Microsoft Windows 3.1 which was the first version of Windows I have ever used. It wasn't as graphical or detailed as what we have today, but it was leaps and bounds more advanced than Dos. There were better graphics, better games, and one thing I loved was being able to assign sounds to various events which hadn't been possible in Dos.
In 1996 I started collecting SSI, and I purchased an IBM Aptiva with a Pentium 166 processor, Windows 95, and by that time I was losing my vision so got Jaws for Windows 2.0. I wasn't very happy with the first release of Windows 95 because it constantly crashed and I often had to go back to the 486 to get anything done because Windows 3.1 was more stable than 95. I liked the look and feel of 95 which was really awesome, but its stability was terrible. It wasn't until Microsoft released 95B that the OS was remotely worth having.
In 1998 I was in college, and while I had my Aptiva it wasn't portable. I purchased a laptop with Windows 98 on it, and I have to say by and large Windows 98 was probably my favorite OS. Especially, 98 Second Edition which was more stable than Windows 95 or Windows 98, but was simple and easy to use. I of course liked it so much I went out and got Windows 98 for the Aptiva which meant I quickly moved to 98 once I found how much I liked it.
Around 2000 I did buy the Windows Millennium upgrade for my laptop, but it ran so slowly that I eventually had to take it off. Millennium frankly sucked and I considered it a waste of money.
I'm trying to think of when I got my first XP machine and I believe that was around 2002. I got a new desktop, actually built a new desktop, and along with I got an OEM version of XP. At the time it was the first version of XP without the service packs so it crashed alot and like a lot of people I did a fair amount of bitching and griping about it. It wasn't until SP1 came out that XP was worth having. By the time SP2 came out it was a fairly decent OS.
Over the course of the next few years I actually purchased and owned more than one PC so I will skip all the details and just say I was happy with XP up until around 2007 when I got a new laptop with Vista on it, and slowly updated some of my other machines to Vista slowly phasing XP out.
When Windows 7 came out, I want to say 2009, I got a copy, found out how much better it was than Vista, and immediately purchased licenses for all of my ,machines that could run it and upgraded them. Those that couldn't run Windows 7 got Linux, and I still mainly use windows 7 on my Windows computers and have a couple of systems running Linux.
To end this long rant I did get a Toshiba laptop in 20011 which came with Windows 7, but last year I upgraded it to Windows 8. Although, I am unwilling to convert all of my systems to Windows 8 I do use the OS on one system and was willing to evaluate it before rendering judgement. In my opinion Windows 8 has its faults, is a new experience, but it has a lot of pros as well.
What I am getting at with this long post is that a lot of you are young, haven't had 30 years of experience behind you, so losing XP is a new experience for you. I have seen operating systems come and go so many times I no longer get attached to any of them. I use them for as long as they are of use to me and switch when it is time to switch. Sooner or later you will have to let go of XP and find something else you can like as well or something you can live with because XP's days are done.
