Anomaly

You sure are willing to jump through a bunch of hoops to keep using a obsolete OS. Why didn't you do that with Windows 95 or 98?

Wow. I don't quite know what to make of the logic in those statements. Imagine going to a Dr and the guy tells you he feels no need to keep up with new procedures or technology. He feels using Google will do. I don't think that Dr will be working on me any time soon. Imagine a mechanic who refuses to keep on the newest tech. Imagine any profession doing that. No amount of reading or Googling can beat experience. There is no way you or anybody else is going to be as able as a person that uses Windows 7. You can Google all you want but if have no experience with the OS you are not knowledgeable about it period. It's not about needing to keep up. It's about acknowledging that time goes by and things improve. It's called progress. It's in every aspect of your life not just computers. You can choose to progress with the rest of the world or stay put in the past waiting to die off with all the other obsolete things. I choose to progress. Not just with computers but in every aspect of my life. I think Mr G or who ever runs this forum should make it mandatory for mods to be up to date when it comes OS's or computers in general. Imagine going to the Mozilla forums and the mods there were still using Firefox 1. It makes no sense. If some one wants to keep using obsolete software than thats their right but when you are a mod or in some other official capacity on a tech forum it makes no sense to be resistant to progress. It's a massive conflict of interest. Computers are all about progress. They are all about the future. They are the biggest thing in human progress in history. They are in every aspect of life now. You progress or die off.

The fact that your local dealer sells more XP machines than anything else means absolutely nothing. Just means there are a lot of people like you that can't leave the past. Doesn't mean anything more than that. MS is some Deep crap if they have to rely on a customer base stuck in the past. Customers who refuse to improve. Sooner or later MS will have to kick those customers to the curb for the sake of the company. They need to kill XP off and cut the umbilical cord and stop coddling people stuck in the past. It holds all of us back.

Is there something stopping you from using Linux?

You are already wrong on that one. Windows 7 is doing very well and is blowing away Vista at this point in Vista's release. As for the rest of the comments on not upgrading from XP. I am reading a lot of excuses for staying with XP and I don't buy any of them. Having said that it's your choice so do what you want. One thing I know for sure is that sooner or later you are going to update from XP weather you like it or not or you will simply be left behind. Your computers will die or something else will happen but you will need to upgrade at some point. In the mean time you fall further behind in knowledge and I don't see how that benefits you in any way. Most of you have an interest in computers or you wouldn't be on this forum. You will be of less and less help as time goes on. You already can't be helpful with Vista or W7 questions and by the sounds of it you will stay with XP even after W8 comes out so you won't be any help with that either. You can't be into computers and not keep up it doesn't make sense.

XP mode only helps people on Windows 7 run old programs. The problem is going to be XP users finding out that the new programs coming out don't support XP and many of the current ones will stop supporting XP. I have read there is talk of FireFox dropping support for XP. They just dropped support for Macs running non Intel chips and those machines are about 4 or 5 years old. Once the programs stop supporting XP it will die off quick.

No I'm not kidding. What programs do I think they will have to up grade to Windows 7 to use? IE9, Windows Media Player 12, Windows Live Essentials just to name a few. As time goes on most programs will drop XP support. How many programs work on Windows 95 or 98? Well XP is a thing of the past and will end up the same way. So will Windows 7 as some point. That's life.

Unzip it to a folder. Make a short cut to the executable and thats it. It runs like regular Opera except you can put the folder any where you want and run from it. It's basically like any other non install program. Your settings are kept in the Opera Profile in a ini file.

You can put it right on your machine. Run it right from the desk top if you want. It's exactly the same as regular Opera except everything is in one folder.

On Windows I use Opera USB Like all portable apps no install necessary and updates are non stressful because I simply copy my perfectly working version to another location and than update the original. If all goes well than I just delete the copy. If the update fails for some reason I have the perfectly working copy. This also works great for trying out new things or adding things to Opera or whatever you do that has some risk of messing up Opera. Can't do this kind of thing with the regular install version.

I have no problems with 10.61 on Windows 7, XP, or Mac. Runs well and has many nice features not available in 10.10

Whats that have to do with what we are talking about? You still need a copy of windows 7.

Most people buy from a big box type store like Best Buy for example or direct from the computer manufacturers like Dell or HP and you will not get a disk. What you will get is a pre installed Windows 7 with a massive amount of crap along with it. You can try and uninstall all of the junk but good luck getting all the left overs.

Couple things to keep in mind if you want to go to windows 7. If you buy a new machine with Windows 7 pre installed on it you will NOT get any disk for re installing. You are expected to make an image using the built in Windows 7 imaging and restore feature. Because of this very mickey mouse MS policy you will never be able to do a clean install of Windows 7 unless you buy a copy of Windows 7. You are stuck with the bloated mess the computer manufacturer gives you. Sure you can try and uninstall all the junk you are going to get with the machine but you will never get to the state it would be if it was a clean install. You will have to buy a Windows 7 disk your self and install from it to get a clean install. If and When you decide to buy a copy of Windows 7 DO NOT waste your money on the full install disk. Get a upgrade disk. This will install Windows 7 on your machine even if you have an empty HHD with no OS on it. It's very easy to do no need for the full install disk.

If that is the real UI it's massively flawed in one aspect for sure. The tab bar beside the address bar is just stupid. You open more than a few tabs and they will either have to compress in size to fit and be too small to use or they will go off screen and you will have to scroll to see them which is inconvenient. Another example of a browser trying to copy Chrome. Another example of a browser dumbing down to compete with Chrome. In the not to distant future we will have nothing but a bunch of Chrome clones around. Wow I can't wait