Goodbye XP

The last Windows XP I own has now been put to rest. Not the computer, just Windows XP.

Way back when Microsoft offered a family pack for Windows 7 Home Premium, I bought one and installed the third and last upgrade on my Fujitsu Lifebook.

I wasn’t sure how it would work as this computer was new in 2005 and had only 1 gig of memory. But the Windows Advisor said it would run and most everything would work, so I made the plunge and now my favorite old computer is working just fine.

The install went very smooth and didn’t take very long. But all those updates, now that is a different story. I downloaded and install a lot of them. Rebooted and downloaded and installed another slew of them, over and over again. Finally, it seemed all of them were completed.

Now I had to find some drivers! Windows said I had no audio on the computer. So I dug out the drivers CD that came with the computer (remember when companies provided recovery CDs?) and Windows found the driver and installed it, so now the Fujitsu has sound.

The display on this computer is fantastic.  Much better than any later computer or monitor. I love this notebook.  It is very heavy, but it still runs great. I won’t be using it to do much real work as most of the applications I use for that require some heavier duty processing.  They would probably work, but would be oh so slow compared to what I use on my newest computer.

So if you have a Windows XP computer and fear it can no longer be used safely, download the Advisor and just see if your computer can run Windows 7 or Windows 8.

If you don’t have an install disk for Windows 7 upgrade, there are a lot of places online that sell them and they sell for much less than a new computer.  But you probably need to make sure they are for a 32 bit rather than 64 bit due to hardware constraints.

Oh dear, I just realized, today is patch Tuesday, so my newly installed OS will have to do more updates!