Re: Do we actually need XP support?

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

> I'm very much looking forward to your step-by-step instructions for VMWare.
I hope to get that done in the next few days, but there isn't any
rocket science. It's all very easy and quick.
> If I decide to go that route, using Win 7 or Win 8.1 as my main OS,
> what's the advantage of using W2K as the virtual OS rather than XP,
> which has the benefit of long familiarity?
Lynn, I too would have been more comfortable selecting XP, but I
blindly took Kari's advice on this, and haven't regretted it. Some of
his reasons are that it is lighter, faster, less of a memory hog. An
enormous thing I love about W2K is that it doesn't require
activation, so can never get egregiously unactivated. To be free of
that detestable XP and post-XP activation mechanism is a great
blessing for me. I hate activation.
One of the major problems with running older operating systems
natively is lack of modern video driver support. VMs counter this by
providing their own up-to-the-minute video drivers. So, for example,
with VMware, W2K operates perfectly with my 3200x1800 screen, even
though that resolution was scarcely available on even the most high
end systems when W2K came out. That is one of the reasons I prefer
VMware to VirtualBox. With VirtualBox, setting up screen resolution,
especially for high-resolution screens, is much more fiddly.
I was looking for a solution that would get me to stable XyWrite with
the minimum of fuss. That's what I found with VMware and W2K. Please
note that the way I set it up, W2K does not communicate with the
internet. That's what I wanted: it saves me having to worry about
attacks, viruses, etc.
The host operating system (Win 7 or 8.1) provides all the internet
access I need, and as I pointed out to Henry, all you have to do to
cut and paste is press Ctrl-C in your Win7/8 program, then alt-tab to
XyWrite, and right-click to paste. It's as simple as that, with the
proviso that, as we all painfully know, pasting an upper ascii
character (like a true apostrophe or an em-dash) from Windows to the
DOS program drives XyWrite mad with grief. Manuel on this list has
documented his system for dealing with that (getting XyWrite onto a
Windows codepage) but I have yet to implement this, though it's on my
to-do list.
I am sure Kari has a lot of other reasons for boosting W2K in this
context - - I felt there was no point in not taking advantage of his
considerable experience, and I really didn't have to know the
details. Lack of activation and
semi-official-retired-and-therefore-free status is enough for me. Add
to that, convenient ISOs are available (I will be providing links) so
no worries about messy CD media.
Above all, it's known that it works, period, with XyWrite, and that
counts for a lot.