October 25th is the official release date for Windows 8, but I, for one, have no intention of “upgrading” to Windows 8 from Windows 7 or XP. Indeed, I still think XP SP3 is one of the best versions of Windows ever, so why exactly should I switch?
Yeah, so XP SP3 is five years old. So what? Does it still work? Yes. Does it still run all my Windows applications? Yes. So, tell me again, exactly why I should upgrade?
Oh sure, Windows 7 SP1 has some good points. It’s a bit faster, it’s a bit more secure, it has some nice network features such as Libraries and DirectAccess, and it has Internet Explorer (IE) 9, which is better than IE 8. Of course, Chrome 21 is better than any version of IE and it runs just fine on Windows 7 and XP.
The bottom line is that while I prefer desktop Linux, especially Mint, on my Windows PCs I’m still using XP on many of them. Why? Because it just works.