If not, keep it. But that laptop sounds very old. You might want to consider buying something new.

Yes, this machine was bought in 1997 (I know, I know) with Windows 98. I did my master's degree online on dialup(!) with this machine.

It's sentimental in a way, but also practical. I probably actually use it about 40 hours a year, so want something that is reliable when I need it, but low cost (as you can understand with a machine of this age.)

Thanks for your immediate response.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle

So no rush yet. If you want to switch over to a Linux now, I'd suggest a close look at Lubuntu. You get the advantages of a major distro in terms of support and development, but without having to drag a 'heavy' interface like KDE or Gnome around - it uses LXDE, which is quite 'windows-ish' so you should have to spend too much time learning how to use it.

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But FWIW, I've still got a Windows 2000 laptop I still use on occasion.

Are you adding new hardware? I suppose you could plug in a USB device and not have a driver for it. The security issue is a minor problem until it isn't. The good news is that xp will be less of a target as it diminishes its installed base. Vulnerabilities in apps like web browsers will likely be fixed independent of any xp support policy.

I'm a teacher and largely supply my classroom's technology needs from my own pocket. My pocket is limited, of course, and so I hang on to computers as long as they boot. I have quiet a few older machines, that, when they outlive Windows, do very well using the Ubuntu operating system. There is a learning curve. It is free.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Or better yet, xubuntu, which is an official Ubuntu release made specifically for older hardware. Everything on my netbook worked right out of the box with it, even the wireless which was a pleasant surprise.

I'll give xubuntu a try.

if you are used to windows, is that with linux you can have different "interfaces" - think of it as sort of like different "tops" on the OS. You can have multiple ones on the same machine and change them by just logging off and logging back on with a different interface.

Ubuntu makes it really easy to install linux on a windows pc. You wouldn't have to delete xp. You would install it along side windows and when you boot up you choose which one you want - windows or ubuntu - for that session. They've made the installation really easy.

Ubuntu comes "standard" with an interface called "unity." It probably would seem a little more "like a mac" than "like a windows" imho, but it is easy to learn. The current version of Ubuntu is 12.10; if you go back to the last version from 6 months ago, version 12.4, you can choose a different interface called "unity 2d" which is uses less resources than the default unity. I'm using it right now on a 6 year old laptop with one gig of ram and a pentium dual core.

In addition to xubuntu, there is another interface called lubuntu which is really easy to use. It will seem a lot like windows xp. A little more customizable. It flies on this laptop.

Basically, you can install ubuntu alongside the windows (I would get version 12.4) and then go to the software center in unity and download other interfaces and try them on and see what you like. It may not be obvious at first, but if you play around with them you will find they are much more customizable than xp, and they will be much more stable.

If you want to try Linux without making a commitment, try Puppy Linux. It comes in 2 flavours - Lucid for newer machines and Wary for older ones. Download the live cd (about 100mB), burn it to a cd, set your machine boot order to cd 1st and hd 2nd and run it. It loads entirely into ram, comes with a basic program package, can read fat and ntfs windows file systems, usb sticks etc and is just generally a painless way to try Linux. You can save files to your hd or a usb stick. You have the option of installing it to your hd. I have been running the Wary version on a P3-900 with 256meg of ram and it's amazingly fast. It picked up all my hardware including a wireless network flawlessly. Small download and a ton of fun. You really have nothing to lose by trying it.

I loaded it on a flash drive and my old Sony loves it! Much faster than XP!

It ain't broke. Don't ditch it. Just because Microsoft is phasing our support doesn't mean you have to stop using it.

But backup your documents/mail/pictures regularly.

If you must move: Ubuntu.

Windoze 7 is not bad, but it is a resource hog, as they all are. That's one Windoze "legacy" they seem to have no trouble porting to each successive version.

As far as security upgrades go-I use 6 out of about 200 fixes for XP and have no problems whatsoever. 99% of the infected computers I see have all the updates and it didn't stop anything.
If it does what you want and is still working, there's no reason to spend money on an upgrade.
I have a neighbor that has an even older Compaq than yours-266MHz cpu, 64 Mb RAM, 2Gb hard drive. It runs Win95 and does what she wants-check her email and word processing so she can type up letters and print them.
Her husband has a newer fancier laptop but she's happy with hers.

I would definitely be concerned about the age of your hard drive. That is definitely the most likely thing to fail at some point. Being that you have 139g and not 13g of storage chances are you already replaced it once already.

If it is not too old you are good to go. Keep in mind that *new* IDE(which is your interface) hard drives are now fairly rare and worth more than your machine. 50 bucks or so. You can find cheap low usage ones on craigslist but it is hard to tell if it really is low-usage.

download linux ubuntu or lubuntu the good thing is the will let you run from the cd
you can try all before you decide which to go with .....
the install which ever you feel is right for you

You don't even have to install it. It will run off the CD

I have an old laptop. It's not too bad, actually, it's XP 64, which hardly anyone ever supported.