Microsoft’s been on a “let’s find reasons to kill off XP” kick since the advent of Vista, let’s just get that out in the open right now. If Vista wasn’t a hugely steaming pile of crap, they would have probably done away with XP long before now. But, it was, and they didn’t. So now they’re coming up with new and some might argue better reasons for folks to not use XP. Like, say, Windows 7–which I’m told is supposed to have all of Vista’s cool and none, or at least less, of Vista’s suck. And XP service pack 3, which kind of lead to their dropping support for anything running an older XP version. And now their latest torpedo aimed at the USS XP. It’d been tossed out there as an unofficial rumor, but it’s since been confirmed. The newest version of Internet Explorer doesn’t like XP. And was probably designed that way.
Now, the million dollar question–is that a good thing? For someone like me, who’s machine was only purchased about 2 years ago now, I’d have to say yes. If only because it was originally clocked to be able to run Vista–it shipped with Vista on it already, not that vista *stayed* on it–and can therefore, by its very nature, more than likely support 7 and not break a sweat. But for someone who’s only machine is kissing 10 years old because that’s about all the computer they can aford, that might not be quite so positive. Even in this day and age, there’s a hell of a lot of people out there who swear by IE and very little else. Personally, I use it only because most of the things I do don’t work very well in firefox, and that’s only going to become more apparent if I land one of the two jobs I’m staring at.
So, pretty much, unless you’re in my technological situation, you’re going to be faced with a simple choice. You can buy a computer that can support Windows 7, then upgrade to Windows 7, or use Firefox. I’m going to put my recommendation behind Firefox. Now, to go find me a job so I can work on converting them to same. Blog ya later.