"Clive Page" wrote in message
...
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

My old laptop started having problems last year and I found that it was
hard to avoid getting 64-bit Win7 on any reasonable replacement, so I gave
in and did that. I found that the only *program* that didn't work was
something called Turnpike (a very good reader for Usenet News). This used
some features of 32-bit windows which weren't in the 64-bit version, and
was also a "mature product" i.e. no longer being developed for new
operating systems. All the possible work-arounds turned out to be dead
ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used in Win7
Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to upgrade it.

Nope, it doesnt cost that much for a version that supports it.

Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading (it isn't as
good, but I can live with it).

But printer drivers are also executable code, and I found that my new HP
laptop would not work with my existing HP laser printer, because HP could
not be bothered to create a 64-bit printer driver for it. It won't even
drive it over the home network when the old printer is connected to the
old Win XP computer which surprised me. Obviously HP are trying very hard
to get me to buy a new printer. Again I eventually found a work-around,
but it's clunky. As a result of my HP experience, when I do get another
printer, it certainly won't be from Hewlett Packard.

So: if you use any programs which are no longer supported (in the sense of
new versions still being developed), or device drivers for old devices,
you might have problems. Other than that, everything is compatible.

By the way, the user interface for Windows 7 is substantially different,
and in my view worse, but it's easy to find instructions on the web to get
it all looking and behaving like Win XP. I see that Windows 8 has even
done away with the "Start" button - so it's a good idea to get Win 7
before Microsoft messes things up even more.

--
Clive Page