Alternative XP upgrades?

[otolith]

Bikerjon said:

Yes, that's exactly what I've done. Several years since I last looked at linux but downloaded a VM of Ubuntu and Mint yesterday and I think in some ways it's more user friendly for an XP user than Win 8 (I never thought I'd say that about linux!)

As I said on one of the other threads, I rebuilt my sister's XP netbook with Mint and posted it back to her. She's been able to use it out of the box without any help from me at all, and is perfectly happy with it. I reckon I would have had more hassle with Win8 ("how do I turn it off?")

[sgrimshaw]

Now you see this is where I am struggling.

If you follow the three pieces of advice, neither is strictly correct.

It's trial and error.

- I searched for Windows Update and found it.

- The search results screen doesn't allow you to pin Windows Update

- I opened Windows Update and right clicked the taskbar icon of the running program and it allowed me to Pin it to TASKBAR. But it was not Windows Update which got pinned but the Control Panel.

- If I open control panel, then right click Windows Update it does indeed give me the option to Pin to Start.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the help ....

[mph1977]

NPI said:

JonRB said:

As a concept, I think it was a sensible suggestion, but apparently he's really struggling with Win 8.1 and has observed that struggles less with the little laptop he bought for my mum last year that has Win7 on it.

I think that's absolutely right and in fact have started the process of moving my elderly (and dangerously incapable!) FIL from XP to Win7 by buying a Win7 mini-tower off eBay. He's got his XP machine in a right mess a couple of times.

Oddly I discovered yesterday that the small form-factor HP/Compaq Elite he's running XP on at the moment has a Win7 label on the bottom, so I'm not sure how he's come to be running XP!

win 7 licence label or 'win 7 ready' promotional sticker ?

a lot of the NHSes XP desktops have 'win 7 ready' labelling ...

[NPI]

mph1977 said:

win 7 licence label or 'win 7 ready' promotional sticker ?

Licence label. He did get it through work (new, at a discounted price) and they set it up from him but I'm still surprised it's running a different OS to the one on the label. It must have come like that as one of the machine's issues it that it's absolutely loaded with HP bloatware.

[mph1977]

NPI said:

mph1977 said:

win 7 licence label or 'win 7 ready' promotional sticker ?

Licence label. He did get it through work (new, at a discounted price) and they set it up from him but I'm still surprised it's running a different OS to the one on the label. It must have come like that as one of the machine's issues it that it's absolutely loaded with HP bloatware.

i think " through work " is the key point there - probably 'downgraded' to the company standard disk image at that time ...

[NPI]

mph1977 said:

i think " through work " is the key point there - probably 'downgraded' to the company standard disk image at that time ...

I did think that, but then didn't think they'd have left all the HP crap on there.

[LC2]

I threw unbuntu 12.04 LTS onto my ancient eeepc 900 a week or so ago, and was suprised to see that everything 'Just Works'.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a linux n00b, having started with (the original)RH5.0 and FVWM2 on a 486 back around 99, but I was expecting a few issues. None - even my Dads 3g dongle worked (that really suprised me).

Anyway, Unity is a bit of a pants shell, unless you tweak it and add bits (I quite like the Mac like task bar addon (forgotten what it's called)).

But for users coming from Windows XP / 7, who are really just users of the browser and email, then something like the modified xfce shell documented in:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2028896/how-to-make...
might be just the ticket.

Stick a (passworded) VNC server on it and skype, and then all your support worries go away

[mph1977]

NPI said:

mph1977 said:

i think " through work " is the key point there - probably 'downgraded' to the company standard disk image at that time ...

I did think that, but then didn't think they'd have left all the HP crap on there.

unless there is a standard disc image that HP were putting on as part of the deal - but that's just supposition

[WinstonWolf]

mph1977 said:

NPI said:

mph1977 said:

i think " through work " is the key point there - probably 'downgraded' to the company standard disk image at that time ...

I did think that, but then didn't think they'd have left all the HP crap on there.

unless there is a standard disc image that HP were putting on as part of the deal - but that's just supposition

HP certainly used to supply recovery discs with preloaded bloatware for multiple OS's.

[GlenMH]

otolith said:

Bikerjon said:

Yes, that's exactly what I've done. Several years since I last looked at linux but downloaded a VM of Ubuntu and Mint yesterday and I think in some ways it's more user friendly for an XP user than Win 8 (I never thought I'd say that about linux!)

As I said on one of the other threads, I rebuilt my sister's XP netbook with Mint and posted it back to her. She's been able to use it out of the box without any help from me at all, and is perfectly happy with it. I reckon I would have had more hassle with Win8 ("how do I turn it off?")

I migrated my parent's Acer Aspire One D250 to Mint tonight - 90 minutes end to end to do a clean install on the hard drive including 300+MB of updates. Installed Skype, 2 minutes googling to sort out getting the built in microphone to work, sent a Firefox shortcut to the desktop, set BBC news to home page and job jobbed.