Re: Staying with XP after April 8 2014 (was Win 7 vs Win 8)

[Daniel Say say@xxxxxxxx]

Two recent posts in the Ask Jack weekly computer column in the London Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2014/feb/13/how-can-i-upgrade-my-netbook-from-xp-to-windows-7


http://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2014/mar/28/which-computer-should-i-buy-to-replace-windows-xp-pc
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    The latter mentioned some requirements in upgrading the
    video resolution and card for Windows 7, 8.1
  A comment was :
I did some digging and neither AMD (ATI) nor NVIDIA have any Windows 8/8.1 drivers for their DirectX
9 cards.

Apparently it might be possible for some cards (Radeon 9500 and up) to use the Win7 drivers in
compatibility mode with a bit of tinkering and get not quite full support.

Windows 8.1 certification requires WDDM support 1.3.

Anything from (ATI) Radeon HD5000 and up and (NVIDIA) Geforce 8xxx and up will "work out of the
box".

Yours Ivan
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28 March 2014 4:23pm
  The most common stumbling block is the need for a graphics card that supports DirectX 9 with a
WDDM driver.

Without double checking, and going from memory, I think you may be wrong here.

The WDDM support you'll get from a DirectX 9 card will only be WDDM 1.0 and it's a requirement for
Windows 8.1 to have WDDM 1.2 (do correct me if I'm mis-remembering).

Anyway, a new graphics card is about #20 for what's needed here so not a big problem.

Yours Ivan
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    Most comments were of the flavour of Get-A-Mac,
    get a Chromebook, use Linux and other not very
    useful comments.