WinXP User Moving to Win8 - Old Program Compatibility Question

In news:alt.comp.os.windows-8, "BillW50" posted on Thu,
27 Dec 2012 15:09:35 -0600 the following:

Oh yeah... another thing to add... While I have been using Windows 7
since July of 2009 and Windows 8 since March of 2012, XP is still my
favorite version. As XP runs more than the previous versions and even
more than the newer Windows versions so far. So just a heads up. ;-)

Yeah, I want to have XP on another partition, but I'm getting a lot of
grief about it in a web forum I've been posting to. I like XP, too, but I
still want Windows 8 running alongside it so if I can't do something in
Windows 8 that I can do in XP, I'll still have XP to come to my rescue.

Damaeus

In ,
Damaeus typed:
In news:alt.comp.os.windows-8, "BillW50" posted on
Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:09:35 -0600 the following:

Oh yeah... another thing to add... While I have been using Windows 7
since July of 2009 and Windows 8 since March of 2012, XP is still my
favorite version. As XP runs more than the previous versions and even
more than the newer Windows versions so far. So just a heads up. ;-)

Yeah, I want to have XP on another partition, but I'm getting a lot of
grief about it in a web forum I've been posting to. I like XP, too,
but I still want Windows 8 running alongside it so if I can't do
something in Windows 8 that I can do in XP, I'll still have XP to
come to my rescue.

Damaeus

I avoid those problems by purchasing two or more of a model. Thus
dualbooting doesn't offer me any advantages. But there seems to be a
solution to your problem that might work out for you. As it appears
Microsoft is ok that after an upgrade, if you go back to your previous
version. Thus I propose that one should be able to leave the original OS
on one drive and then clone it for the upgrade Windows (if required) on
a new drive. Then remove the original and save as a backup. Do the
upgrade on the clone and you now have the new Windows.

Now at any time you can remove the upgrade drive and put your backup
drive with the original Windows. So it is like dualbooting, but you are
switching hard drives instead. Most of my machines are easy to swap hard
drives. I bought spare carriers for these Gateway M465 machines for
example and I can swap drives in about two seconds. I dunno, but is that
doable for you?

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

In news:alt.comp.os.windows-8, "BillW50" posted on Sat,
29 Dec 2012 02:57:45 -0600 the following:

In ,
Damaeus typed:

Yeah, I want to have XP on another partition, but I'm getting a lot of
grief about it in a web forum I've been posting to. I like XP, too,
but I still want Windows 8 running alongside it so if I can't do
something in Windows 8 that I can do in XP, I'll still have XP to come
to my rescue.

I avoid those problems by purchasing two or more of a model.

Heh... if I had the money and the space, I'd have three or four computers:
Win8, WinXP, Linux, and Macintosh for the optional fourth.

Thus dualbooting doesn't offer me any advantages. But there seems to
be a solution to your problem that might work out for you. As it
appears Microsoft is ok that after an upgrade, if you go back to your
previous version. Thus I propose that one should be able to leave the
original OS on one drive and then clone it for the upgrade Windows (if
required) on a new drive. Then remove the original and save as a
backup. Do the upgrade on the clone and you now have the new Windows.

Before building my new system, I'm going to re-partition the 320GB drive
(unless I get a SSD to add) and install WinXP on it while I still have an
old IDE drive with XP, otherwise I don't think I'll be able to install XP
at all. I can't find the disc I used to get the upgrade to install with
no detectable XP installs on any of the drives. This is why I hate having
an upgrade disc, and it's why I bought the full version of Win8, so I'll
know I have a good disc for future upgrades to later versions.

Now at any time you can remove the upgrade drive and put your backup
drive with the original Windows. So it is like dualbooting, but you are
switching hard drives instead. Most of my machines are easy to swap hard
drives. I bought spare carriers for these Gateway M465 machines for
example and I can swap drives in about two seconds. I dunno, but is that
doable for you?

I can't swap hard drives in two seconds. I have an Antec case and the
hard drives are easy to remove because they are in a "cage" that can be
removed with just the flicking of a lever, but I'd still have to remove
four screws holding the drive in cage. The closest thing I could do is
install the different operating systems on different physical discs, then
when I want to change which OS I'm using, I could just change the plugs.
One hard drive would always be disconnected, but I really don't want to go
that route. I mean, that's what boot menus are for.

I researched dual-booting Win8 and WinXP. The advice I found says to
install XP first, and then Win8, otherwise XP will overwite the boot menu
put in place by Win8.

Damaeus

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 07:19:38 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:

In ,
Gene Wirchenko typed:
On Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:07:42 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 12/25/2012 9:53 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:

[snip]

WordStar has a very nice ease-of-use that I have not seen in
any other editor. My opinion, and other people's MMV.

The only one that I found is very close is VDE (Video Display
Editor). It has been around since around the early 90's. And it is
very fast even on XT machines (remember those?). It used to have a
limit of only working with files like 80kb or smaller. I have no
idea today what is happening with it anymore. The author's name is
Eric Meyer if I recall correctly.

I found a Website devoted to it
https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/
On the basis of the site, it looks good so far. When I finish up some
current programming, I will dig into it and see if it does the trick
for me. Thank you for mentioning it.

Yes that is it! I used to use it all of the time back in the CP/M and
DOS days. Even in the early Windows days. Although when drives and CPUs
got so much faster, WordStar wasn't so slow anymore and I ended up using
WordStar more and more. Maybe I too should take another look at it. ;-)

I finally got around to installing VDE. It is quite a bit like
WordStar with some minor differences that are tripping me up just a
bit. In particular, I have been using WordStar 2000 which has
different key assignments. VDE appears to be quite usable though, far
more than any other WordStar-compatible. That, sadly, does not say
much though.

I will have to read the documentation and see if some of my
concerns are covered by configuration. WordStar 2000 allows one to
edit up to three files at once. VDE does, too, but I can not see how
to have them all showing at once. Sometimes, I want that, as when
comparing code segments.

But so far, pretty good.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

In ,
Gene Wirchenko typed:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 07:19:38 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:

In ,
Gene Wirchenko typed:
On Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:07:42 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 12/25/2012 9:53 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:

[snip]

WordStar has a very nice ease-of-use that I have not seen in
any other editor. My opinion, and other people's MMV.

The only one that I found is very close is VDE (Video Display
Editor). It has been around since around the early 90's. And it is
very fast even on XT machines (remember those?). It used to have a
limit of only working with files like 80kb or smaller. I have no
idea today what is happening with it anymore. The author's name is
Eric Meyer if I recall correctly.

I found a Website devoted to it
https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/
On the basis of the site, it looks good so far. When I finish up
some current programming, I will dig into it and see if it does the
trick for me. Thank you for mentioning it.

Yes that is it! I used to use it all of the time back in the CP/M and
DOS days. Even in the early Windows days. Although when drives and
CPUs got so much faster, WordStar wasn't so slow anymore and I ended
up using WordStar more and more. Maybe I too should take another
look at it. ;-)

I finally got around to installing VDE. It is quite a bit like
WordStar with some minor differences that are tripping me up just a
bit. In particular, I have been using WordStar 2000 which has
different key assignments. VDE appears to be quite usable though, far
more than any other WordStar-compatible. That, sadly, does not say
much though.

I will have to read the documentation and see if some of my
concerns are covered by configuration. WordStar 2000 allows one to
edit up to three files at once. VDE does, too, but I can not see how
to have them all showing at once. Sometimes, I want that, as when
comparing code segments.

But so far, pretty good.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

It has been years since I have used VDE myself. And I seem to recall you
could open up five files at a time. Although later versions might be
able to open more. And I am guessing you are looking for is something
that is sometimes called split window. And I can't recall if VDE had
this ability or not.

As for the key commands, WordStar and VDE both started out with the same
keys. Although Eric added features that WordStar didn't have. So he made
up new command keys for the newer features. Although later, WordStar
added some of them, but WordStar used different key commands. This is
where the difference started to creep in.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2