# Synovus Banks Drop Download Support for Windows XP



## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

I received this notice from Synovus Financial, a bank holding corporation, and the umbrella company of my local bank. I'm posting this because Synovus has banks in many locations across the southeast.
.


> Date: 6/23/2016 9:58:00 AM
> Subject: Windows XP No Longer Supported
> From: Synovus Online Banking
> 
> ...


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## Wilf (Oct 15, 2008)

I don't believe Quicken gets a whole lot of love either. Intuit sold it a while back and there are free options. I think QuickBooks is still owned by Intuit, but I understand FreshBooks (Canadian) has become a major competitor.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Upgrading from XP is not something most users would be able to do. One, most likely it's an old system. And you can't upgrade in place to 7 (not that you can buy it these days).

It's realistically a new computer, but XP needs to die.


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## bmetelsky (Mar 1, 2009)

Wilf said:


> I don't believe Quicken gets a whole lot of love either. Intuit sold it a while back and there are free options. I think QuickBooks is still owned by Intuit, but I understand FreshBooks (Canadian) has become a major competitor.


Actually, the latest incarnation of Quicken is very good. It doesn't have some of the bugs that plagued prior versions. I'm using it on Windows 10.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk


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## Wilf (Oct 15, 2008)

dpeters11 said:


> Upgrading from XP is not something most users would be able to do. One, most likely it's an old system. And you can't upgrade in place to 7 (not that you can buy it these days).
> 
> It's realistically a new computer, but XP needs to die.


Actually you can still buy W7 and you can still buy new PCs with W7 installed. You have to look around a bit, at places like Dell and Lenovo, but they are there. Updating to a new version of Windows is a major, major issue for enterprise and it is not done lightly. Some places currently pay MS for continued support of WinXP installations.

Note that XP through W10 are all based on the NT core, and this shows up in security/bug patches in that they usually apply to W7, W8, and W10. XP is not included because of a business decision. Also, older versions of Office continue work on W10.

Enterprise generally runs a lot of custom software applications, and MS does not want to upset their business customers by making their very costly software obsolete - otherwise enterprises would never want to update.

Apple is not constrained to make their systems work with old software, and in the Linux world, older versions of OS's never go away - one of several reasons most servers run Linux (about 80% the last time I checked).


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Wilf said:


> Actually you can still buy W7 and you can still buy new PCs with W7 installed. You have to look around a bit, at places like Dell and Lenovo, but they are there. Updating to a new version of Windows is a major, major issue for enterprise and it is not done lightly. Some places currently pay MS for continued support of WinXP installations.
> 
> Note that XP through W10 are all based on the NT core, and this shows up in security/bug patches in that they usually apply to W7, W8, and W10. XP is not included because of a business decision. Also, older versions of Office continue work on W10.
> 
> ...


You can still get a 7 Pro system still, not Home. And Pro will end in October. I'd thought that date had passed.

XP not being supported by software companies may be a business decision but a valid one. At my office, I fought to stop supporting old versions of Windows connecting in, and eventually was successful to an extent, though some users that had to install service packs for XP and Vista weren't happy. We're blocking all versions of iOS prior to 9.3.2 next week.

For Windows 7, businesses will need to make a decision by 2018 or so, a year before updates stop.

There are times where someone just needs to stop...I just saw a thread of someone trying to install Frontpage 2002 on Win10...


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

dpeters11 said:


> There are times where someone just needs to stop...I just saw a thread of someone trying to install Frontpage 2002 on Win10...


I'm still running Visio 2003 on Windows 10, although not very often.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

billsharpe said:


> I'm still running Visio 2003 on Windows 10, although not very often.


Visio I see more. Of course I don't know what the person uses Frontpage for, but it was always a bad way of creating web sites and would be a really bad way today.


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

Frontpage was fine for creating relatively simple web pages for Internet Explorer. Of course it's outdated now and no longer supported by MS. I now use Microsoft's free Expression Web, which supports most browsers. MS doesn't support it directly any more but there's a forum available for questions and answers.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

dpeters11 said:


> Upgrading from XP is not something most users would be able to do. One, most likely it's an old system. And you can't upgrade in place to 7 (not that you can buy it these days).


Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001, and end of life was well announced for YEARS prior to the April 8, 2014 end of life date. Mainstream support ended April 14, 2009. End of sale was June 30, 2008. So, for a good chunk of those systems, they are several years old. Of course, that doesn't prevent companies from exercising their downgrade rights through corporate licensing.  I had an escalation about two weeks ago because of XP issues even though we had announced end of support for XP "due to security reasons" at the end of 2014, and the version of the software that supports XP goes end-of-life at the end of this year.

Now, you can still get a Windows 7 Professional system, and for not much money IF you don't mind dealing with "refurbished" goods. I have a Lenovo THINKCENTRE M53 Tiny Desktop, Intel J2900 Quad-Core 2.41GHz with a Intel Pentium Processor J2900 that I picked up as a multimedia PC. The other was a very refurbished Dell Optiplex 990 Small Form Factor Desktop, Intel Core i5-2400 3.1GHz Quad-Core with a Intel® Core™ i5-2400 Processor (Sandy Bridge). Each of those computers cost me around $250 each, and for what I need to do (capture streaming audio on the J2900, test bed system for the i5), they do the job well. Although I admit, when I got the systems, I put in all of the available patches for Windows 7, made a complete drive image, upgraded to Windows 10, removed the Windows 7 install, made sure all patches were in place, then got a Windows 10 image before installing the applications.



Wilf said:


> Note that XP through W10 are all based on the NT core, and this shows up in security/bug patches in that they usually apply to W7, W8, and W10. XP is not included because of a business decision. Also, older versions of Office continue work on W10.
> 
> Enterprise generally runs a lot of custom software applications, and MS does not want to upset their business customers by making their very costly software obsolete - otherwise enterprises would never want to update.
> 
> Apple is not constrained to make their systems work with old software, and in the Linux world, older versions of OS's never go away - one of several reasons most servers run Linux (about 80% the last time I checked).


There is more than just the NT core, there is a ton of associated APIs as well in Windows. While Windows XP was well known as a 32-bit operating system, there was a 64-bit version of Windows XP as well, although it was not well supported. Not many people know this, but XP SP1, released on September 9, 2002 (one year after OS release), added support for USB 2.0. Anyone NOT using USB nowadays? Also, at the time of Windows XP release, we all thought that the memory limitation of ~4GB would not be realistically reached, yet 4GB systems were showing up near the end of Windows XP lifecycle (4 GB minus system overhead). My current system has 32GB of RAM (needed for Virtualbox and video editing), and my newly-built FreeNAS box has 64GB.

As for Linux.... usually those who use Linux and maintain it have their stuff together.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Now that they are offering Windows for free forever I am thinking this issue of supporting old hardware forever may fade a little. I always felt that they created a bad precedence eons ago by keeping things supported for as long as they did.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

inkahauts said:


> Now that they are offering Windows for free forever I am thinking this issue of supporting old hardware forever may fade a little. I always felt that they created a bad precedence eons ago by keeping things supported for as long as they did.


Windows isn't free if you move it to a new machine.


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Also, as far as I know it isn't free after July 29th.


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

The upgrade to Windows 10 from Win 7 and Win 8.1 was free for a year. If upgraded by July 29 Win 10 shouldn't cost anymore after that.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Right, those that already have 10 won't have to pay for it again on that machine.

My personal feeling is that in 2019/2020 users will be complaining that they have to buy it.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

James Long said:


> Windows isn't free if you move it to a new machine.


If you are getting a new computer today you would be silly not to get one with Windows 10 on it. The move to a new machine and have to buy it would apply to people who build their own and you always have to buy software at some point so that makes sense. But anyone with Windows 7 or newer should upgrade to Windows 10 for free if they expect to keep that machine for more than three more years.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

dpeters11 said:


> Right, those that already have 10 won't have to pay for it again on that machine.
> 
> My personal feeling is that in 2019/2020 users will be complaining that they have to buy it.


Yep. It'll be interesting when they realize they could have done it for free.

Of course it may be free again in three years but I kinda doubt it.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

There is no guarantee that some future "upgrade" to Windows 10 will not support every piece of hardware currently functional on Window 10. And if you believe every currently supported piece of hardware will be supported forever then you believe Microsoft will never make changes that will negatively affect old hardware - even when it becomes obsolete.

I don't have that faith in Microsoft.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

James Long said:


> There is no guarantee that some future "upgrade" to Windows 10 will not support every piece of hardware currently functional on Window 10. And if you believe every currently supported piece of hardware will be supported forever then you believe Microsoft will never make changes that will negatively affect old hardware - even when it becomes obsolete.
> 
> I don't have that faith in Microsoft.


No, you're right. It's already happened actually, there were systems compatible with Windows 8 but not compatible with 8.1 (or 10).


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

dpeters11 said:


> No, you're right. It's already happened actually, there were systems compatible with Windows 8 but not compatible with 8.1 (or 10).


True enough. MS warned me about one program, Acronis True Image, beforehand. Another one wouldn't work initially but a software update from the supplier fixed that.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

billsharpe said:


> True enough. MS warned me about one program, Acronis True Image, beforehand. Another one wouldn't work initially but a software update from the supplier fixed that.


Yeah, though I was actually referring to hardware. There are some CPUs that are 7 and 8.0 compatible but not 8.1 or 10, due to not having required instruction sets.


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