What will computing look like after 2014?

As M$ have invoked their 2014 end of life for XP SP3.

I am not happy because I not getting rid of my beautiful Sony Vaio desktop PCV-V300G. It has Pentium 4 2.8Ghz, and has the maximum 2 x 512MB PC-3200. It has served me well and still runs like a race horse. The problem is this Sony cannot take any larger RAM, so speed is always a concern when weighing it down with all these new active security products.

Of course, XP SP3 will still work, but M$ will not be looking for any more vulnerabilities, so if we want to stay with XP SP3 (a great OS imho) we need a pretty good protection if there are no Tuesday updates.

Previously I tried Immunet 3 as a launch into the cloud (still not sold on the Cloud) and found Immunet's scanning too slow.

I had Vipre 2012, but too many false positives that MBAM picked up. I had Private Firewall, but it has so many popups I don't know the answer to and finish up blocking something I need. PF is great if you know how to use it or dumb it down, then I guess it would not be effective--so I have ruled that out.

Presently I have Comodo Internet Security Pro 2012 (paid), and Acronis imaging.

I can't be the only Luddite who refuses to move from something that works well, to something "new" when there is just no need to upgrade, as what I have continues to do the job for me very well.

What are your recommendations for a mix as a good all round solution both paid and free products that will take us luddites into the the next decade after M$ writes us off and forces us into whatever they think computing will look like after 2014?

 

I and many folks I know aren't sold on the cloud either, so you're not alone there. What MS and others think computing will look like in 2014 pretty much boils down to what their marketing departments and "stat sites" say it will, so don't put too much thought into that. As to your security issue, if you already have MBAM running in real-time, minus its IP blocker you're doing good. Perhaps look into something like Sandboxie?

It takes little resources, a small amount of fairly easy set up, and then you all but forget it. As for firewalls, maybe try Online-Armor? They have more convoluted options if you desire them, but, out of the box, it's a fairly simple, easy to understand firewall. If you're running with that little memory, I wouldn't even bother with a real-time AV with the rest of those programs running. I'd just either run my files through an online AV checker, or choose a lightweight AV and set it for on-demand scanning.

 

What will computing look like after 2014? An excellent question. My guess, the way Win 8 is going, I reckon it will look a bit Linux.

 

I reckon that will be a really good way of running XP after 2014. Sandboxie isn't particularly expensive to buy either is it? I gather that there is a trial version as well.

 

What do you use XP for? Is Linux ruled out entirely?

Moving to something like Xubuntu (very light) would probably be great if you're not a gamer. Infinitely more secure than XP, long term support releases available, 100% free in every sense of the word, and there's a community willing to help you sort out any issues.

 

Xfce is mainly used for its ability to run a modern desktop environment on relatively modest hardware, not to say "antique" after 2014

 

PFW is a very good firewall/hips combo for XP especially, but the concerns you shared are realistic ones. It does take considerable study to fine tune it to perfection but most users simply don't have all that extra time on their hands just to configure security products. I'm using it now but also have EQS running in the tray untill convinced PFW can run on it's own.

I'm one of those that absolutely refuse to follow bully Microsoft's silly pattern of releasing one O/S after another only to find that your hard earned money has just bought yet another time limited version that may or may not perform as well as the one you took so much time setting up in the first place.

Whatta they trying to prove? Their makers of disposable lighters? It's foolish and naive IMO to be taken in like that on anything, let alone an investment that runs out of support sooner then the automobile.

I decided to bite the bullet and MAYBE pickup on Windows 8 or 9 when they come out. It depends on how much active life they'll be given. XP Pro is been great for me too, still is. Yeah 64 bit may be the transition and norm before long but how much you wanna bet that 96 or 128bit will be rolled out in the not so distant future.

I agree, a computer simply is choked the more that it has to meet the demand of ever increasing amounts of programs just to run normally on the internet.

 

cdisxm

As mentioned earlier in this thread;
Sandboxie free or paid. Very lite and excellent online protection for your browser. For your browser, go with IE 8 or Firefox.
Add keyscrambler (free). It's very lite and effective.
You might consider Bufferzone (free). In my limited experience it ran quite well on XP SP-2.
I also recommend CCleaner and Glary utilities (free version) for clean up plus other tools such as a startup manager. Also, Glary has a really good Disk analysis feature which can help in locating old file remnants for removal.
IMO, Malwarebytes (free) is a must-have. Lite and effective. No real-time scanner but if you employ Sandboxie, I don't believe you would need it.
As far as a firewall, I still like Sygate. Properly configured, it can offer very good two-way protection, is very quiet under normal circumstances, and it runs lite and fast even on a modest system.

-And-
I wonder if uninstalling Acronis would be of help. It must be consuming some resources and you should be able to create and restore images via the rescue CD.
Just a thought.
I would also give serious consideration to uninstalling CIS and going with SBIE, Keyscrambler, MBAM, and a lite firewall, perhaps the Sygate or even staying with the Windows FW.

 

@ wtsinnc

I should frame your response You picked up well on Acronis hogging resources. I picked the resource hogs with Sysinternals. Your suggestions are the best I have seen, and agree with your reasoning. I tried Glary before but now I am throwing Comodo overboard (they refunded my $4.99 - no questions), so I am not even losing, then I have also uninstalled Comodo System utilities 4.

I am not so sure how to configure Sygate properly, but I also like it, even though Symantec killed it off. I will look for a tutorial on configuring it.

Would you be able to briefly tell me what advantages you are getting from your configuration :

nProtect MBR Guard|EQSecure v4.0 Beta3 !| SandboxIE |Comodo FW-D+|FirstDefense-ISR| DriveSnapshot Imaging |Power Shadow|PrivateFireWall
Maxthon 3.3.6 | X Iron 17.0 | Chromium 19.0 | CometBird 11

Thanks for all your suggestions. I will implement them all.

Cheers!

 

The world will not end if you run XP after it's end of life, but you need to understand where you're vulnerable and shore it up.

My recommendations? I'll probably sound like a total jerk saying this, but sometimes the truth hurts. You really really need to learn how to configure a firewall. You also need to understand how to implement mandatory access controls of some sort. You cannot defend what you don't understand.

I found a really interesting and excellent series of tutorials on networking (which is what you need to understand to set up a firewal) here
http://www.trainsignal.com/blog/free-computer-training-videos/free-networking-training-videos
They're aimed at beginners and almost make the subject seem simple. They totally unraveled the mysteries of TCP/IP traffic for me.

I really don't have a problem with people wanting to run old operating systems, so long as they deeply understand the vulnerabilities and how to defend them. You're sunk if you just throw security software at it without understanding what it's doing.

 

Exactly right. Once MS drops support and vendors follow suit, the burden of support lands on you. That includes a basic understanding of internet protocol. This would include such things as:

1. What the basic protocols are (TCP, UDP, ICMP) and what they're used for.
2. What IP addresses are.
3. What ports are and the purposes of the most common ones (example DNS uses port 53)
4. How DNS works.
5. How DHCP works.
6. The difference between inbound and outbound connections as it pertains to firewall rules.
7. What local or loopback connections are and how they work.

This might look like a lot but it's not as bad as you might think. You don't need in depth knowledge or learn to take internet packets apart.

SandBoxie is an option you might consider trying. It's simpler than learning to implement the more restrictive security policies and is quite light on the system. Combined with a lightweight firewall, Sandboxie is a good choice for older systems.

 

Gaming is pretty much out on hardware that old anyway. Linux would be what I would do with an old machine.

Running XP in 2014 would be equivalent to running Windows 98 right now.

 

... and you could always put XP in a virtual machine to run whatever it is you cannot run anywhere else. At least then if XP gets compromised then you could just revert back to a good snapshot. Much simpler than hunting down malware with unsupported vendor tools. You'd want to get that fully up and running before EOL though.

There are options.

 

@ BrandiCandi and @noone particular.

Thanks so much for your candid suggestions. They are the golden rules of computing in any environmental.

Sandboxie is something I am playing with and like a lot. The author has been quite responsive in emails. Which is also a plus while it remains a small obscure business.

All in all, it's reassuring to hear time-honored advice that takes us back to the basics.

 

Mostly, but gaming would still be a no for the most part. Virtualized graphics adapters will run very few games.

 

Games aren't necessarily out of the question if you use Linux with WINE though I can't say for sure how they compare.

 

Has the OP considered Windows 7?

 

If your modem does not include a router, get one. Or better yet, buy one and put modem into pass through mode for better security. I learned not to rely on a software firewall for inbound filtering. You would not believe the crap a router blocks.

 

What will computing look like after 2014 you ask? Google high tech specs from Google X.

Now when we are talking about xp support ending in about 2 years, I myself will install a linux OS in my netbook in place of XP next year. Preferably Ubuntu.

 

Seeing Ubuntu mentioned again makes me think of a question that has been in the back of my mind. I don't follow it and its ecosystem, but I've frequently seen it mentioned in the context of cloud computing and I've seen a number of Canonical and other statements that communicate Ubuntu Desktop will continue to evolve towards cloud-linked computing. I'd be interested to know if those of you who know Ubuntu Desktop well think it will remain a viable stand-alone computing platform for the rest of this decade. IOW, whether it will continue to be possible to use it without tying it to an online account, without having to acquire apps through an Ubuntu store, without having to store private data in a Canonical or other cloud, etc.

 

Much as I dislike change I will just say one thing in defence of new versions of Operating Systems, and that is that as hardware has continued to improve, the older operating systems inevitably are rendered obsolete by their inability to make use of hardware developments. I understand that even Windows XP is limited somewhat by not having been designed with dual-core computers in mind. Although I suspect that this may not be the case so much in the near future, as instead of becoming ever more powerful developers seem to be reducing capabilities in favour of toymaking. And of course anyone who's happy with their system can ignore this.

With due respect I would venture to disagree with BrandiCandi and noone_particular, that regardless of Microsoft's patches or lack thereof it is quite possible to secure your system from malware without needing to master the complexities of firewall configuration as there are so many pre-built solutions such as the various forms of virtualisation and real-time system protection applications (anti-virus+behaviour blocking) that will work just the same without Microsoft's latest round of bolt-on patches.

 

Right now in the 12.04 release, Ubuntu has a cloud available. However you can disable it. And they only give you a very small storage space in the cloud as a free trial with the OS. If you want to use it for real you would have to purchase additional storage space. (i.e. don't pay & you don't have it) Future releases of Ubuntu may make the cloud more interwoven in the OS, but at least in 12.04 it can be removed easily and I don't think they would change that in 12.04 this version with updates moving forward.

Here's what Ubuntu has to say about its cloud computer strategy (which is really aimed at enterprises and not really for desktop users):
http://www.canonical.com/about-cano...-cloud-technologies-future-thinking-companies

 

That will depend on the age of the OS you're using. When MS drops support for an OS, security app vendors follow suit not long after, as do user app vendors. Win 2000 users are encountering this a lot now, Firefox being one example. 98 users have dealt with this for years. With XPs popularity, vendors might be more hesitant to drop support and lose a large customer base, but eventually they will. Users of virtualization software on these systems will eventually find that the newest versions won't work on the older systems. They can keep using the last versions that did and mitigate any vulnerabilities it may have through other means. The same applies to user apps like browsers. Once things reach this point, the user needs to know how to mitigate these vulnerabilities. Malicious code that escapes a sandbox or virtual system is far less damaging when the host system is default-deny secured. It really depends on how long you intend to use that OS after official support ends. Myself, I use 98SE as my primary and XP-Pro for the few apps that don't run on 98. As long as I have hardware that will run them and they can connect to the internet, I'll keep using them. Given the lifespan I get from most hardware, 10+ years, it'll be a long time before I have to switch.

True. I do some multiplayer gaming on my old XP hardware. It's definitely pushing the limits of the hardware. Compared to most anything else, this is backwards when you think about it. An older PC can be a very effective tool and can do most any work it needs to, save for video editing. But to be a good playtoy, it's got to be more modern hardware.

 

Excellent point. Time is the crux. I do think it will be a good long time before developers completely abandon XP and hackers discover vulnerabilities in all the available security software. And by this time I would think that most people's hardware will likely be failing as machines only last for so long. The Windows 95 computer in my household is probably the most secure as it has never been online and has no usb ports or cd drives. I haven't seen too many floppy disk viruses lately. It probably is also the fastest for doing actual work on too! Windows 2000 is still as easily secured as any subsequent release, largely because subsequent security improvement are either fairly marginal (such as dual rights tokens) or easily more than compensated for by alternatives (firewall). But then 2000 was also a huge leap forwards, really like nothing since.

 

2000 was is an excellent OS, especially if you put it on the later XP hardware. Many of the best security apps work well on it. With the right setup, internet security is not really a problem on older operating systems. The real problem for those on older systems is user application compatibility. There are some excellent unofficial upgrades that allow older operating systems to run newer apps but they're not really suitable for the mainstream.

As for computing itself in 2014, my primary concern is this push to cloud computing and web applications. User apps like office software continue to work just fine after support ends. With web applications, unsupported becomes unavailable unless the user pays and pays again. I completely expect to see new formats for the web applications that will eventually be incompatible with conventional applications, much like MS did with their office software and the DOCX format. If adopted by the mainstream, they would tend to force users to web applications and away from applications on their own systems. A long time ago, I read that several big money corporations wanted the web to be pay per use. Cloud computing and web applications is a blatant attempt to make that a reality.