XP as a vital economic resource

I use Corel Ventura Publisher v10 (written for W2K then patched for 2003 XP) to produce 2 "directories" for two groups which have 300-600 members. Each directory includes bio info and a photo, plus other materials. Ventura has a DataBase Publisher application that can extract all this information, as well as the mug shot filename, directly from the database (Which is a DBF format, Lotus Approach, also a legacy app) and flows this into 50-60 formatted pages in seconds. Glitches, such as too many characters per line, need manual intervention, takes maybe an hour. Then when it is done, CVP can output the pages in a 3x3 13 x 19 matrix to make lithographic printing simple.

InDesign cannot do any of this. Without spending nearly a thousand dollars on plugins, first for the data import and second for the flowing data to multiple pages, and third to "impose" the pages appropriately. InDesign is the only alternative.

Three weeks ago the database publisher module spaced out and would not work. W10 had killed it was my initial thought. So I did the job by using Word's mail merge (not very different from WordStar 40 years ago! (Shame on you MS!) and then manually editing...took 7 days of 10-12 hours/day instead of 4-5 hours.

Got to thinking about options. Building an XP only box was one, and I had a couple of old Pentium boxes I could use. Then I looked at using XP Mode in the W7 box I have. Ventura is a "linked" application, it imports and links nearly everything, and thus if you move the app from one box to another you then need to make sure all linkages are correct. Hard or impossible to do on a VM and I couldn't get it to recognize "E:/" by itself, because E:/ was on the host machine and was not addressed as E:/ but as "Bruno e:/" so things would not relink. And manually fixing all the linkages was not part of the plan.

Anyway, I got the project done but I got to thinking about how to solve the problem once and for all. MS is going to dump 32 bit and all legacy apps RSN. A VM wasn't reliable enough, and I didn't want to regress to a 1999 era machine. What about...dual boot?

I found an XP on eBay with Sata drivers built in (item 223388759671). And decided to tackle a dual boot machine using my W7 box (because W10 won't dual boot old windows OSes. W7 will)

So that's my plan. I will update as it unfolds. As to "security," I think I'll simply deactivate the network adapter in XP and deal with moving things via USB or a data transfer cable.

 

You probably read my other reply in the main forum, but it may be simplest to find a working XP box on eBay and use VNC or Remote Desktop (or get a KVM) to connect to it from your main PC. Once I found VNC, I never multibooted again. There are other desktop remote apps others may recommend. I like VNC, even with the refresh bug, because it's fast and very lightweight, using the least resources on client and server.

Find an OEM-activated business class XP Professional box Core2Duo to I7 from the 2008-2016 era and use that for your Corel Ventura Publisher task.

Do multiple searches on eBay, keywords like:
HP XP Professional Core2Duo
HP XP Professional Core2Quad
HP XP Professional I3
HP XP Professional I5
HP XP Professional I7

Don't use anything older than the Core2 series. Those that came before had no power management and use lots of electricity (I know, I still run a P4, managed to slow it to 2.4GHz with some jumper changes). The P4 is very slow compared to a Core2Quad. Can't even play a Bluray on one (100% CPU gives 8FPS). My Core2Quad sits around 12% decoding H264 1080p 23.976FPS. In that test, I used the same video card and decoder (FFDShow), so ya can't say that made a difference.

Avoid Dell if possible unless you can determine business class model numbers to search. Most of the ones I've seen on eBay are consumer class (junk quality and lots of crapware to attempt to uninstall).

You may find yourself doing other tasks on the XP box (in a more efficient manner than Win10). Win10 is a big piece of dog dung in my book. Between the unusable (for me) GUI and the spyware built into it that can't be removed, plus most of my apps don't run on it (many don't even work on 7) it's a no go OS.

Don't worry about security on XP. Windows 7 and 10 are about the same security-wise (bad). Just don't do anything dumb that could get you a virus (like browse most places on the internet, including mainstream sites and stores; those have 3rd party ads that sometimes have viruses). At work, my IT dept. forced me off my XP box. I've suffered for a year and a half with Windows 7. My productivity is a fraction of what it was on the XP box... I told them all this beforehand as I had both boxes at my desk for 3 years (used a KVM, VNC, and Remote Desktop) so I could easily compare (and migrate to Win7). On XP, I didn't dare go to anything but known safe websites. I did get a few viruses on the Win7 box... visiting mainstream sites.

You'll need Linux to safely visit the internet or check email. I run Linux Mint with the Mate desktop in a VMWare virtual machine (note the licensing for VMWare Player is non-commercial only). VMWare Player v4.04 was the last free version to have the Network config utility which lets you define via GUI your virtual network (you have to install the utility manually). It runs fine on Win7 (don't know about Win10).

XP is actually more secure than Win7 or 10 in one crucial way:
Holding down the shift key while your USB stick mounts disables all autorun (including any boot sector virus lurking in your USB stick). Windows 7 and 10 DO NOT have the feature (If someone know a Group Policy mod that can enable this XP feature in Window 7, I'd be most gratetful).

 

I hear and understand your point. I am going to do the dual boot thing first, I used to use dual boot some years back and was happy with it…more so than VNC. But "then" is not "now", and, you are right in that it could become a PIA.

But I have also decided to build (using "retired" components) a Core2Duo based machine on an G41 ASUS mobo with 8GB of DDR2 ram as a backup for the Dual Boot (yes I know the "extra 4 won't be addressable by XP, but a 4GB ram disc sure speeds up printing, PDF generation, and many other tasks).

I have very limited room, thus the appeal of Dual Boot. All I need is a cooler and case/psu. This would be a reserve machine in case the dual boot gets tangled up. And VNC could make it easier to find a place to stick it (already running 4 computers off KVM, 2 macs and 2 winboxes).