Alternative XP upgrades?

[Bikerjon]

So all of a sudden I'm getting a trickle of calls from people worried about their XP machines now that MS have pulled the plug. There's no in-place upgrade from XP to 8 so switching is by no means as easy as it should be IMO. Then when you factor in the high price of Win 8 and maybe a hardware upgrade or 2, it soon becomes obvious that for most people a new machine will be the chosen route. Even then there's still the data transfer to contend with...

Trouble is many of the people stuck on XP obviously don't like change much and when I look at metro and the all the office features, toolbars and clutter it's always going to be a thankless upgrade! Whichever way they move it's going to involve some upheaval. I've seen various threads recently about going from XP to linux so today I downloaded a VM of Ubuntu and Mint. I haven't tried linux for ages and have to say I'm quite impressed. I have a few customers who literally only use their computers for webmail and word documents so for them it just might make sense to reuse their old familiar machines with zero upgrade cost.

Has anyone here actually ditched XP for Linux? What other options are there for reluctant XP switchers?

[Bikerjon]

Crafty_ said:

For the millionth time you don't have to use the metro update. Use classic shell, boot to desktop and most people won't even notice other than going "ooh the bar thingy at the bottom isn't blue any more"...

You've missed the point. I know this - it's what I do for a living!

However I haven't as yet offered Linux as an option for a reluctant upgrader, so I'm interested in anyone who's taken that path.

[Bikerjon]

Paul Drawmer said:

OP I understand it's what you do for a living, so why don't you try installing Ubuntu LTS on one of your own machines to try it?

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!)

Some of the people contacting me are more than happy with XP. Their needs are basic but they still need to be online so their machine must be secure. For this type of person I think either sourcing a copy of Windows 7 or a move to Ubuntu will be the way forward.

I know this issue has been on the radar for ages, but up until this week I have had very few enquiries about it!