Win 7 64bit and Hard Drive questions.

[OldProf]

Nah, I see XP being viable for two to three more years. But it's like Eric and Buzz say, when the official MS support is gone, vendors are not gonna need to (or want to) keep making XP drivers for their products. Same as with Win 98 and ME. Try and find device drivers for those versions.

This is the way the industry makes it's money. New version of Windows, vendors want you to buy new hardware, not create drivers for their "old" stuff. (Creative was one that really got the public mad when Win 7 came out and they didn't write new drivers for their existing sound cards) Motherboards still support XP but that will go away, too. None of the new boards support 98 or ME anymore. Best bet for now is a dual boot like you already asked. XP on one drive, Win 7 on another drive. You'll slowly see how nice Win 7 is, and that probably 99% of your current "stuff" still runs just fine.

Good comments, Chris. I can't help noting that they also remind me of products sold by a certain train simulator company, recently renamed for a bird.

For what it's worth, most of the Italians I know still prefer XP to any newer version of Windows.

[arizonachris]

I have one friend that refuses to give up Win 98 SE. He bought one of those expensive HP All-In-One touch screen PC's (we're talking $2,300 for a glorified lap top) and it wouldn't run Win 98 SE. He had HP jumping thru hoops for a week until they finally got 98 to work.