Dude, who knows what shit will be around then....

Using antivirus will only account for a small percentage of malware out in the wild. We used to run samples we found against all major antivirus products and regularly encountered cases where detection never happened. So you can run all of those tools you like, it doesn't mean you aren't infected with something. In this era, malware changes so often and shows up with so many variants, it's impossible for anyone to keep up.

That said, these days not running AV is dumb too, even if the percentage of detection is low. At least you capture the most common variants. Having a firewall is not bad either, but again, no guarantee. There is no guaranteed way to know if you are infected or not.

I fail to see why you don't bother installing updates? It's a simple task and won't cause problems, it seems like you are just being stubborn about it for no good reason, when it does a lot of good. Using security tools is not a replacement for keeping your software up to date.

Oh, I know. I will be in jail for pirating tentacle porn.

I explained more than a few times why it's not possible for me to upgrade from WinXp to Win7 at this moment. If you're too stubborn to read, I don't give a fuck.

I didn't say anything about going from Windows XP to Windows 7. I was referring to installing security updates from MIcrosoft.

Because that would require online authentication :P

You want proof that the "desktop" tile exists ? and that by clicking on it you have access to the desktop ? Ok... who was it already who was talking about ignorance again... I am sure that if you look on Youtube you can find somebody committing the incredible feat of clicking on it. ( You don't want proof that Youtube exists do you ? )

Even from a technical side, you probably don't know, but Microsoft actually release a lot of technical documentation for its platform, so you don't actually need to work at Microsoft to know how their architecture works all it takes is some minimal google skill to get all the "proof" you want :

The two first results:

http://karthikvadla.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/windows-runtime-architecture-winrt/
http://www.rdnug.com/2013/01/12/winrt-vs-win32-windows-8-architecture-unveiled/
Actually if you don't use any WinRT application, the Metro part is hardly anything more than a lousy full screen start menu. ( And for that there are tons of free or not free replacement.)

The taskbar is still there, the desktop is still there, the explorer is still there and, despite its "ribbon"-ish interface works the same than before. Most of the tools and shortcut from 7 are still here.

The biggest change you have to cope with is where to find that damn shutdown button, but once you learn the correct keyboard shortcut this is no longer a big issue.

I was asking for proof for the "metro is a layer" statement that you insist of making. Guess when push come to shove and your shoddy arguments fizzle all you have is personal attacks. Classy. And you wonder why I called you a fanboy.

So Metro Apps occupying the same level as desktop apps as per diagram makes Metro a "layer". Are desktop apps and the traditional desktop a layer? Looks to me the OS is designed so switching between the two interfaces can be done seamlessly. So Metro is not more of a layer than the traditional desktop is

Yeah, "Metro is layer". Next time read the docs in your links.

Funny coming from the guy who were who was calling other peoples fanboy, talking about "ignorance"... classy indeed.

Then you understand it wrong; there is absolutely nothing seamless about it, Desktop and Metro apps are separated and can barely even communicate together except through some very limited channels. Metro apps are one one side, Desktop apps are on the other, that's what I have been saying since the beginning : If you use only desktop apps you don't need to care at all about Metro except as a start menu, just click the desktop tile and forget it's there.

Apple have a long history of dropping support for old CPUs, so Mac users don't expect to be able to run old software on their machines. Microsoft made their money by supporting every old piece of crap program that users have accumulated over the last few decades, and it's the reason people continue to buy Windows. If they drop support for old apps, why would anyone buy Windows?

The changes to their driver models are bad enough. We have an XP machine which will be running XP forever, because it has special hardware for which drivers only exist for XP. We have a Windows 95 (maybe 98) machine which will be running Windows 95/98 forever because it has special hardware for which drivers only exist on 95/98.

Within a few months of Ubuntu pushing out a release that gave you a choice between only Unity, Gnome 3 and KDE, surveys showed Linux Mint replacing it as the most popular Linux distro. I think that's proof enough.

That's fine that you have that. However to expect MS to support anything and everything forever is just dumb. All it does is stop innovation and create more security and performance problems. Why should they support you forever at their expense? People want Windows to be cutting edge and flawless yet want perfect backwards compatibility spanning over a decade. That simply isn't realistic.

The company I work for wants great new websites, yet expects it to fully work on IE7 and IE8 meaning using HTML5 is out *facepalm*. Staff complains the ordering system is slow, yet management refuses to allot proper time to allow IT staff to rewrite the code. Instead they for new features to be added to a VB6 program. Hell VB6 was never even supposed to be used that way. It was originally meant to quickly prototype your new software then write the program in C++, JAVA, C etc.

Switching back and forth between them *is* seamless. You can start metro apps and desktop ones and switch between them effortlessly, seamlessly. They are isolated from each other but that not make Metro a layer on top of the desktop as you were trying to make us think it was. They are on the same level even if there is no IPC between metro apps and desktop apps. No interaction between Win32 and WinRT applications does not make Metro a layer. From the links you posted , the diagrams show them being treated exactly the same, on the same level.
Oh "the surveys". Which ones exactly?

The, uh, ones that were widely publicised at the time.

If you don't already know this, you really aren't qualified to be discussing the subject. We shouldn't have to do your research for you.

Well I for one am grateful towards Microsoft for giving backwards compatibility a high priority throughout the years. Playing old games on newer systems would have been much less enjoyable with a different approach. I don't like the new Apple influenced direction they are currently going in, but we'll see how it all turns out.

Windows XP is, because it is such an old system, an excellent choice for playing good old games on. Since it will likely soon become very insecure your best choices are:

* As a secondary OS in a dual-boot setup.
* As the primary OS on a dedicated retro-gaming machine
* As the primary OS in a virtual machine

If it works, why would I upgrade an OS? I can understand taking new os with new computer but never seen any point in upgrading OS on old hardware. I will have to replace my current rig soon but I definately won't get the broken mess known as Win8. I had quite enough of it in ~3 months my workplace had one laptop with it. I didn't even use it but I had to fix or solve problems on it at least a dozen times. That's exactly same experience I had with my sisters laptop that had Vista. Win7 is not bad OS (have it on my laptop), but still it has the cursed UAC that should never ever been invented (I've had to explain hundreds of times how to bypass it).

That would be quite interesting indeed, as with smartphones and tablets it is considered quite normal that you can't get the latest OS versions and fixes to older units, but you are supposed to buy newer hardware for them.

I stopped getting any firmware updates for my ASUS Transformer tablet a long time ago already (it has Android version 4.0.3, while the latest one is apparently 4.3; my Android phone has 2.3.5). The apps that I've installed in them still occasionally get updates, though.

So unless you keep replacing your smartphones and tablets with newer hardware every year, you just can't keep up quite long, sorry. :)