Stability as an OS is not the issue. Vulnerability to viruses and hacks will increasingly become an issue since MS will no longer provide patches. @:-)

Because of this, XP essentially IS broke.

Don't you think that the anti virus programs like Norton and McAfee will do their best to protect you?

Seems they're not the only ones. The IRS is paying for extended support now too.

Viruses are not the only danger... and anyway they often exploit the user, not a vulnerability in the software/OS. There are plenty of other attacks that rely on vulnerabilities and for which an AV product may or may not help you.

More likely the drivers, something which has never been Dell's forte. Are you running a Dell-provided driver for the E6430, the latest Intel-provided driver, or one that comes from Windows Update?

The USB 3.0 controller in the (main body of the) E6430 is the exact same Intel chipset XHCI controller that comes in every single other Q77 chipset laptop, which is the vast majority of 2012-generation (Core i3/5/7-3xxx aka Ivy Bridge) major-brand business notebooks. It's essentially the same chipset controller as in every other Intel-CPU notebook of the same generation.

As for the lowest bidder, Dell moved their notebook manufacturing from Malaysia for the D-series (and older) to China for the E-series, and it REALLY showed in the early production E6x00 series. It's improved a lot since then, and the E6x30 generation was a big improvement over the past 3 (see, for example, the fit of the bottom case and HDD mounts over the E6x20).

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I still run a few old apps in a not-network-connected Windows XP VM. I used to occasionally open the network to let it get updates... no point anymore.

My home desktop is still XP - old machine that can't be upgraded. I'm just biding time until it dies. I really only use it to print things from since my laptop(s) are Macs and they don't have a printer driver for my printer. So, I email things to myself to print. Really a pain, but I don't print that much.

Also used for things like going online to print a boarding pass. I still use it to keep my personal accounting spreadsheet but REALLY need to move that over before it crashes someday.

The printer is a cheap POS so I really just need to invest in a wireless printer with a Mac driver and I'd be pretty much good to go.

The other thing is that Mrs. Milepig needs a wacky piece of software to access her work files (including email, they don't even have any webmail system) and we've never been able to find anything that will work on a Mac, so she uses the desktop when she's at home. A royal pain.

We were in a similar position at our house and bought an HP LaserJet Pro 200 color MFP M276nw. It was on sale for about $170 at the time and, like you, we needed the upgrade, even though the HP printer it replaced was working fine.

I guess I lucked out with printers; my basic B&W laser predates Windows 2000 let alone XP and still works with everything(*); one of the first models with USB, and speaks both PCL and (emulated) Postscript.

Not bad for $300 almost 15 years ago. Lexmark no longer makes the toner for it, but easy to get from 3rd parties, and other than double-feeding sheets of paper

(* and I include things way more obscure than typical desktop OSes, although to print from OpenVMS a few years ago I had to save the postscript to a file, ftp it to a different machine, and then send that to the raw USB port.)

Not that it's plug-and-play with Windows XP/7/8, but it's pretty easy to pick a compatible driver out of the list.

Um, do you still have a rotary phone in the house?

Moved to 7 long ago across all our work machines. I have a new laptop with 8.1, it's truly horrible to use. We've looked at downgrading it to 7.

I got an urgent call from my parents a few days ago... one of their laptops runs XP and they had seen on the news that it was going to stop working

Nah, but I do have a basic no-special-features wireline phone sitting next to the network interface, in case the power goes out and the cordless base station becomes useless.

*LOL*

What would a newer printer do for me, besides print in color? (and possibly have a duplexer, although a lot of new ones don't have that?) If I have humongous documents, 8 PPM is pretty slow, but a more usual use case is printing one page for my tax extension or my nanny's pay stub every other week.

We're not talking some 1980s-vintage laser that weighs 60 pounds and sounds like a jet engine... although recalling how some of the Laserjet Series II (and smaller relatives) were built, I'll bet some folks still have them running.

(My wife has bought 3 color lasers in that time, and killed two of the three. The little Lexmark just keeps cranking, at a way lower cost per page, and a compactness that makes it not worth disposing of.)

http://lifehacker.com/5965889/how-to...e-in-windows-8

Within the comments of that Lifehacker article is the most cool Windows video I've ever seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=vPnehDhGa14