The 1927 car anology is fairly accurate.The model T while it can run at least close to highway speeds unlike the earlier cars it lacks safety features.
XP is old and missing many things security related that a modern OS has. I have another post to yours which I won't bore you. But how much money does a company waste having computers at Tuesday not work for 5 hours due to McCrappy doing a scan. YES I HAVE SEEN THIS! Or waiting 7 to 10 minutes each bootup before the computer is happy and fully loaded for all 4,000 employees in your office?! Or infections and re-imaging? Have you seen the cryptolocker virus stories on here and in Arstechnica? Yikes.
If you work in IT you are negligent if you are not upgrading or your boss is if he wont pay for it. Virtualization can make your IE 6 nightmare shitwareERP app go away and make it future proof as you can load it with a modern web browser or your IPAD. This means if the pc dies (hypothetical future based on Windows 9 being metro and rent to own) you can still run your poorly written apps forever.
I think a 2001 to 2012 analogy might equal more to a Windows 8 to 8.1. Besides electronic gizmos there is really no difference. Windows 7 really is not a bad OS. For Windows it is the best one made hands down.
We really liked Windows XP. Windows 7 is OK too, but please stop churning your OS versions for planned obsolescence and give us what we really want: a stable, updated, secure OS that will last as long as our hardware.
We would be pleased to consider a reasonable subscription fee for such updates as it would afford us significant peace of mind and stability.
Signed,
Many Customers
That subscription and update is called Windows 7.
The reason it is not compatible is the same reason Java is not. They do not have the same security and many poorly written apps require local admin or use a particular bug like an IE 6 rendering glitch to position elements, or rely on non recommending practices.
I remember when the same happened with the introduction of XP/Windows 2000 with these apps with peaks and pokes from DOS still in them not running. I survived just fine and it was a big deal after the upgrade to what we had which lasted so long and cut down support costs on a momentous scale!
If you want to keep getting hacked and have 5 minute startups due to windows rot in your registry and security deficiencies that is your problem. 5 minutes a day for everyone in the office for a whole damn year adds up! Windows 7 is a fine OS improvement and every client who upgrades tell me malware infections have been cut in half and pc's no longer need to be re-imaged every year because they stay fast longer.
Trust me like the move to Windows 2000 which was tough it was roses compared to the daily crashes wasn't it? It is time to move on.
First off you are describing a very high level enterprise problem and the good news is that in 2014 we not only have a better desktop OS we have advanced virtualization that can run from a web browser.
With Citrix Receiver you set it up once and forget. Even the CEO with his Apple iPAD can log in and run IE 6 just fine and you save money. Save it because you do not have to upgrade those intranet apps which I guess are now tied to IE 8.... in a very short time in 4 years it will be time to dump Windows 7. Then what? Start all over again?! Hell no. As long as the IE 6 app requires no internet access it can run unsupported in a VM forever.
This my friend is a much better approach then configuring per client and is future proof and runs on non PC's.
Can you tell me in a straight face in 5 years if management even will want pcs anymore? If I wrote in 2009 that tablets would make a killing on the pc market I would be laughed at here with a -1 offtopic faster than you can say goatse! If Windows 9 is a flop and cloud OS for just metro applets it is time to consider tablets with monitors and keyboards unless the trajectory changes?!
You are going to be fired for not keeping things secure when production stops for 1 month as you start after April the migration from zCrypto locker which will keep running around the clock as no patch will be made after you clean each node. As a cost center you will get shafted anyway so might as well do it on your terms rather than the company president.
Idiots. Sorry man but you're screwed and another job is in order. It is not fair to you that a lack of planning on your bosses part causes an emergency on your part.
Kernel level sandboxing, ASLR, dep for all services, no direct local admin without uac token, drivers that don't bsod easily, volume shadow copy restore points, smp > 2 cpu's, easy recovery from video driver crashes, homegroup with printer and media sharing over WiFi, trim command for ssd, ahci for command queing in page disk requests, a sane paging algorithm that doesn't thrash and destroy hard disks, USB 3 and thundebolt support, are just a few off my head.The security is the HUGE selling point for business. It is 2014 now.
Also with it being 2014 we have mature virtualization for those must have IE 6 apps. Citrix, hyperV, and VMware can take care of it all even on an IPAD.
Its 2014. Time to move on. You can get 4 gigs of ram for $50. Bare in mind Windows 7 disk and ram usage is over reported as it buffers things if the kernel detects extra ram. Disk usage is inflated from SXS which means Windows keeps extra dll versions that dynamically linked. That is a feature and you can trim with disk cleanup.
XP is a security nightmare and most MBA managers do not know or calculate this. XP doesn't scale well past 2 cores and is not optimized with CPU instructions from more modern CPUs
The end of file and program manager were big things.
In my opinion Windows had 3 different gui's. Windows 1/2.x tiles, Windows 3.0/3.11, Windows 95 - windows 7, and Windows 8. Windows 1.0 and Windows 8 were very similar and consider it the same.
Really the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 95 were translucent 3d accelerated effects. Start button, the my documents, settings, and other things still there. The bar looks a little different with square apps to fit more space. It is the same other than modest evolution like jump lists etc. I do love instant search and aero peak but they came gradually while the core concepts are identical to its much older cousin.
Funny from a user point of view IOS works just fine with responsiveness. A user noticing latency vs a computer is totally different but you seem to know all the answers.
However, after using HomeGroup and having multiple users on each machine (I like using an admin account, and regular account)it makes A TON OF SENSE. Basically like an FTP site you have public and non-public with the virtual directory.
If you want to share something you put it in public documents in the libraries.
It is a very convenient way to share documents and takes awhile to get used to it but makes sense as it is a virtual folder so to speak. For scripts just copy foo to the public documents and all users on that machine will see it. Move it to the my downloads or my documents in each user profile directory (just like Linux) and you copy it for each user.
That and some options were missing in file explorer were my only real reservations. Yes Windows file copying was slower but if something wouldn't all fit it would at least warn you unlike XP. With the later patches or with Teracopy Windows 7 fixed that issue on its.
Windows phone is gaining popularity fast in Europe. In Italy it is 10% of the market. It is doubling in the US too.
I love my Nokia. I had a thing against android after my first Galaxy S1 which became so bloated and slow. Windows phone is responsive and have a nice gui and runs with less resources than Linux. It also has a battery saver and bandwidth limit function too that Android does not have.
Also I do not have to worry about ads popping up in the dialer like in KitKat either.
I met 2 people in the last 3 weeks who just upgraded to Nokias by the way. They all love them. The only problem is the lack of apps right now. But as an OS if it did not come from Microsoft it would be getting positive praise here.
Well 1/3 of internet uses prefer XP over the new bloated garbage.
It works and there is no reason to change. Sexy is mobile now and as long as their crappy IE intranet aps and office programs work then who cares.
Windows 7 is a nice OS and I am typing on it right now. But I see no reason to leave even if it is slightly better because what I have still meets my needs. The only thing I see in the future if rumors are true is MS is doing a more search centric UI that more apps will use. They will likely be back ported to Windows 7 as no developer will touch them if their users can't use (because they still wont leave Windows 7). Try instant search wont integrate with Bing on Windows 7 but that is it.
The other major change rumored for Windows 10 is cloudOS where it is rented each month!! NO! That is an upgrade for MS and not for it's users.... actually I will upgrade to Windows 9 next sometime in 2020 when Windows 7 is EOL and Windows 10 rental edition is out. I will use that until 2025 if it means I do not have this cloud.
Call me a luddite but technology is here and amazing and it is not the night and day difference it once was. Just like cars some newer models are slightly better and have some more gizmos etc. But at the end of the day if what you ahve works fine then do not fix it.
The windows 8 kernel is great!... yeah yeah we all hate Metro.
But I run it on a Windows Phone. The kernel on the Windows phone is identical to Server 2012 and the Xboxone. It is quicker than my older Android one, lite, responsive, and has low cpu utiliazation. MS really did cut out many millions of lines of code with Windows 7 from the XP days to make the kernel as small and modular as possible. It is not a micro kernel in any sense of the means but its latency, size, and other issues with responsiveness and power usage right now have Linux beat.
Linux is really complicated with calls all over the place.
After dealing with them at work and I have turned around and am one myself like you with Windows 7.
Windows 9 could be a better OS and it is cool to look at and read about. But so what if what I have works fine? If what I have meets my needs I wont change. Perhaps Windows 9 is the OS that will come with my next computer. More than likely if I do decide to upgrade in the future I will probably put Windows 7 on because it works and meets my needs fine and I am familiar with it.
The idea of a secure and stable OS was met with Windows 7. There is no need to leave from that.... also with moores law going away there is no need to upgrade hardware either. What I am curious about is how is MS going to react? My fear is a rental OS all cloud based as soon as Windows 7 goes EOL. Boy, do I not like that idea!
Win 3.1 was totally and I mean totally 16 bit! The only thing 32-bit was the disk i/o driver. It had ram, cooperative multitasking, and even extended vs expanded ram limits of DOS. It was a horrible horrible piece of shit!
Windows 95 had 32 bit graphics, modern multitasking pre-emptive (also compilied 32 bits) where a single app won't take down the computer, 32-bit networking, and even a 32-bit app framework that made apps NT compaitible as long as they did not have hard coded pnp dos settings or advanced directX features, etc.
It was night and day. Yes Dos still had some code in it for legacy apps but really it was a 32-bit OS on top of a partial 16 bit dos kernel. IT was a NT hybrid so to speak unlike Windows 3.1 which was a graphic gui api on top of crappy DOS.
I loved Windows 7 when it came out and was excited to leave XP and Vista behind FINALLY!
What is so bad about it? Is it change. Do you find the libraries weird? Do you know like the theme?
Windows 7 has new features as well. If you hit the Windows key on the keyboard and type it will instantly find any document or program. A godsend if you are college student and have hundreds of files! I can search "financial analysis Marsh 2008" and find only the correct excel and word documents for this!
I like aero snap. On your Windows 7 system drag the title bar of your browser to the left or right? Notice there was a clear rectangle on what it would look like before it was moved? Now you can have 2 documents side by side.
As an IT pro I finally can do a system file check. Sooo annoying under XP. Sure we can use the OEM XP SP 2 disk but guess what? 70% of the files have been altered since 2008 because of Windows Update making the damn thing useless. So if your XP installation is corrupted I can not fix it:-(
But that is my opinion. If you hate the translucent aero you can adjust this and make it solid. I think it looks pretty and do not mind it. You can even make it look like Windows 95 if you want and disable aero.
All these things just the gui. Under the hood it is a vast improvement from the XP days.
With aero if these screenshots are correct. FYI they are for Windows 8.2 and not Windows 9. But if MS is re-adding it back to the previous it will be in the later.
What I have works fine and I see no reason to change.
I frankly could not care if it is a better OS if the one I have meet my needs fine. With 1/3 of internet users in the same boat with XP still in 2014 I know I am not alone. The real question is what is MS going to do now that computers are stable, secure, and fast enough and there is no night and difference from upgrading anymore?
These issues have been flagged for roughly a decade. I have ZERO SYMPATHY for anyone who gets taken over.
MSOBKOW this is your boss.
What do you mean it is a security risk to put this on the internet? Everyone else has no problem doing this and I never heard of anyone being hacked. Like a billion dollar company would ever design such a thing when an internet connection is required to stay activated. Are you telling me that firewall you said we needed doesn't make is impenetrable?! Why can't you secure it? Do I need to hire someone who will?
Java could have been fixed when they found out that their sandbox execution back in the early 2000's had so many holes that it made a sieve look like a glass. And by fix, I mean nuke it from orbit and rebuild it from the ground up instead of issuing bandage after bandage, on something they knew was already a mess.
Coulda Woulda Shoulda...
It's interesting how technical debt has interest, sometimes so high you can only keep doing the equivalent of "pressing more money" and see where that takes you (as if everybody didn't know).
As the saying goes money talks shit walks. It is more true in business than anywhere else. Technical debt means nothing. Financial debt and costs mean everything. If it costs money to fix the answer will always be NO even with long term financial benefits.
Some people tend to leave IT and go into management or other technical but not computer fields like statistics for reasons like these that drive people up the wall.
Really? AV protection is your trump card for using the PC? Rather than preventing system compromise, I'd say your system is compromised by the AV software.
If you think AV protection is of any use whatsoever, you are the fool.
Ahh the lie that gets repeated here so often therefore it must be true.
Slashdot Mirror
The 1927 car anology is fairly accurate.The model T while it can run at least close to highway speeds unlike the earlier cars it lacks safety features.
XP is old and missing many things security related that a modern OS has. I have another post to yours which I won't bore you. But how much money does a company waste having computers at Tuesday not work for 5 hours due to McCrappy doing a scan. YES I HAVE SEEN THIS! Or waiting 7 to 10 minutes each bootup before the computer is happy and fully loaded for all 4,000 employees in your office?! Or infections and re-imaging? Have you seen the cryptolocker virus stories on here and in Arstechnica? Yikes.
If you work in IT you are negligent if you are not upgrading or your boss is if he wont pay for it. Virtualization can make your IE 6 nightmare shitwareERP app go away and make it future proof as you can load it with a modern web browser or your IPAD. This means if the pc dies (hypothetical future based on Windows 9 being metro and rent to own) you can still run your poorly written apps forever.
I think a 2001 to 2012 analogy might equal more to a Windows 8 to 8.1. Besides electronic gizmos there is really no difference. Windows 7 really is not a bad OS. For Windows it is the best one made hands down.
We really liked Windows XP. Windows 7 is OK too, but please stop churning your OS versions for planned obsolescence and give us what we really want: a stable, updated, secure OS that will last as long as our hardware.
We would be pleased to consider a reasonable subscription fee for such updates as it would afford us significant peace of mind and stability.
Signed,
Many Customers
That subscription and update is called Windows 7.
The reason it is not compatible is the same reason Java is not. They do not have the same security and many poorly written apps require local admin or use a particular bug like an IE 6 rendering glitch to position elements, or rely on non recommending practices.
I remember when the same happened with the introduction of XP/Windows 2000 with these apps with peaks and pokes from DOS still in them not running. I survived just fine and it was a big deal after the upgrade to what we had which lasted so long and cut down support costs on a momentous scale!
If you want to keep getting hacked and have 5 minute startups due to windows rot in your registry and security deficiencies that is your problem. 5 minutes a day for everyone in the office for a whole damn year adds up! Windows 7 is a fine OS improvement and every client who upgrades tell me malware infections have been cut in half and pc's no longer need to be re-imaged every year because they stay fast longer.
Trust me like the move to Windows 2000 which was tough it was roses compared to the daily crashes wasn't it? It is time to move on.
First off you are describing a very high level enterprise problem and the good news is that in 2014 we not only have a better desktop OS we have advanced virtualization that can run from a web browser.
With Citrix Receiver you set it up once and forget. Even the CEO with his Apple iPAD can log in and run IE 6 just fine and you save money. Save it because you do not have to upgrade those intranet apps which I guess are now tied to IE 8. ... in a very short time in 4 years it will be time to dump Windows 7. Then what? Start all over again?! Hell no. As long as the IE 6 app requires no internet access it can run unsupported in a VM forever.
This my friend is a much better approach then configuring per client and is future proof and runs on non PC's.
Can you tell me in a straight face in 5 years if management even will want pcs anymore? If I wrote in 2009 that tablets would make a killing on the pc market I would be laughed at here with a -1 offtopic faster than you can say goatse! If Windows 9 is a flop and cloud OS for just metro applets it is time to consider tablets with monitors and keyboards unless the trajectory changes?!
Time to sign a resignation letter.
You are going to be fired for not keeping things secure when production stops for 1 month as you start after April the migration from zCrypto locker which will keep running around the clock as no patch will be made after you clean each node. As a cost center you will get shafted anyway so might as well do it on your terms rather than the company president.
Idiots. Sorry man but you're screwed and another job is in order. It is not fair to you that a lack of planning on your bosses part causes an emergency on your part.
Try 25%! It is just a hair above the scanner ms defender
Kernel level sandboxing, ASLR, dep for all services, no direct local admin without uac token, drivers that don't bsod easily, volume shadow copy restore points, smp > 2 cpu's, easy recovery from video driver crashes, homegroup with printer and media sharing over WiFi, trim command for ssd, ahci for command queing in page disk requests, a sane paging algorithm that doesn't thrash and destroy hard disks, USB 3 and thundebolt support, are just a few off my head.The security is the HUGE selling point for business. It is 2014 now.
Also with it being 2014 we have mature virtualization for those must have IE 6 apps. Citrix, hyperV, and VMware can take care of it all even on an IPAD.
That's odd I could have sweated I had 4 updates today and 3 were security related
Still running HP-UX and Sco xenix and old redhat. Legacy apps, but we don't connect them to the internet.
Its 2014. Time to move on. You can get 4 gigs of ram for $50. Bare in mind Windows 7 disk and ram usage is over reported as it buffers things if the kernel detects extra ram. Disk usage is inflated from SXS which means Windows keeps extra dll versions that dynamically linked. That is a feature and you can trim with disk cleanup.
XP is a security nightmare and most MBA managers do not know or calculate this. XP doesn't scale well past 2 cores and is not optimized with CPU instructions from more modern CPUs
The end of file and program manager were big things.
In my opinion Windows had 3 different gui's. Windows 1/2.x tiles, Windows 3.0/3.11, Windows 95 - windows 7, and Windows 8. Windows 1.0 and Windows 8 were very similar and consider it the same.
Really the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 95 were translucent 3d accelerated effects. Start button, the my documents, settings, and other things still there. The bar looks a little different with square apps to fit more space. It is the same other than modest evolution like jump lists etc. I do love instant search and aero peak but they came gradually while the core concepts are identical to its much older cousin.
Funny from a user point of view IOS works just fine with responsiveness. A user noticing latency vs a computer is totally different but you seem to know all the answers.
I agreed with you when I first saw them. WTF!
However, after using HomeGroup and having multiple users on each machine (I like using an admin account, and regular account)it makes A TON OF SENSE. Basically like an FTP site you have public and non-public with the virtual directory.
If you want to share something you put it in public documents in the libraries.
It is a very convenient way to share documents and takes awhile to get used to it but makes sense as it is a virtual folder so to speak. For scripts just copy foo to the public documents and all users on that machine will see it. Move it to the my downloads or my documents in each user profile directory (just like Linux) and you copy it for each user.
That and some options were missing in file explorer were my only real reservations. Yes Windows file copying was slower but if something wouldn't all fit it would at least warn you unlike XP. With the later patches or with Teracopy Windows 7 fixed that issue on its.
Even MacOSX is no longer a microkernel but that is the closest to it.
It is hybrid.
Windows phone is gaining popularity fast in Europe. In Italy it is 10% of the market. It is doubling in the US too.
I love my Nokia. I had a thing against android after my first Galaxy S1 which became so bloated and slow. Windows phone is responsive and have a nice gui and runs with less resources than Linux. It also has a battery saver and bandwidth limit function too that Android does not have.
Also I do not have to worry about ads popping up in the dialer like in KitKat either.
I met 2 people in the last 3 weeks who just upgraded to Nokias by the way. They all love them. The only problem is the lack of apps right now. But as an OS if it did not come from Microsoft it would be getting positive praise here.
Well 1/3 of internet uses prefer XP over the new bloated garbage.
It works and there is no reason to change. Sexy is mobile now and as long as their crappy IE intranet aps and office programs work then who cares.
Windows 7 is a nice OS and I am typing on it right now. But I see no reason to leave even if it is slightly better because what I have still meets my needs. The only thing I see in the future if rumors are true is MS is doing a more search centric UI that more apps will use. They will likely be back ported to Windows 7 as no developer will touch them if their users can't use (because they still wont leave Windows 7). Try instant search wont integrate with Bing on Windows 7 but that is it.
The other major change rumored for Windows 10 is cloudOS where it is rented each month!! NO! That is an upgrade for MS and not for it's users. ... actually I will upgrade to Windows 9 next sometime in 2020 when Windows 7 is EOL and Windows 10 rental edition is out. I will use that until 2025 if it means I do not have this cloud.
Call me a luddite but technology is here and amazing and it is not the night and day difference it once was. Just like cars some newer models are slightly better and have some more gizmos etc. But at the end of the day if what you ahve works fine then do not fix it.
The windows 8 kernel is great! ... yeah yeah we all hate Metro.
But I run it on a Windows Phone. The kernel on the Windows phone is identical to Server 2012 and the Xboxone. It is quicker than my older Android one, lite, responsive, and has low cpu utiliazation. MS really did cut out many millions of lines of code with Windows 7 from the XP days to make the kernel as small and modular as possible. It is not a micro kernel in any sense of the means but its latency, size, and other issues with responsiveness and power usage right now have Linux beat.
Linux is really complicated with calls all over the place.
I used to laugh at the XP holdouts.
After dealing with them at work and I have turned around and am one myself like you with Windows 7.
Windows 9 could be a better OS and it is cool to look at and read about. But so what if what I have works fine? If what I have meets my needs I wont change. Perhaps Windows 9 is the OS that will come with my next computer. More than likely if I do decide to upgrade in the future I will probably put Windows 7 on because it works and meets my needs fine and I am familiar with it.
The idea of a secure and stable OS was met with Windows 7. There is no need to leave from that. ... also with moores law going away there is no need to upgrade hardware either. What I am curious about is how is MS going to react? My fear is a rental OS all cloud based as soon as Windows 7 goes EOL. Boy, do I not like that idea!
Win 3.1 was totally and I mean totally 16 bit! The only thing 32-bit was the disk i/o driver. It had ram, cooperative multitasking, and even extended vs expanded ram limits of DOS. It was a horrible horrible piece of shit!
Windows 95 had 32 bit graphics, modern multitasking pre-emptive (also compilied 32 bits) where a single app won't take down the computer, 32-bit networking, and even a 32-bit app framework that made apps NT compaitible as long as they did not have hard coded pnp dos settings or advanced directX features, etc.
It was night and day. Yes Dos still had some code in it for legacy apps but really it was a 32-bit OS on top of a partial 16 bit dos kernel. IT was a NT hybrid so to speak unlike Windows 3.1 which was a graphic gui api on top of crappy DOS.
I loved Windows 7 when it came out and was excited to leave XP and Vista behind FINALLY!
What is so bad about it? Is it change. Do you find the libraries weird? Do you know like the theme?
Windows 7 has new features as well. If you hit the Windows key on the keyboard and type it will instantly find any document or program. A godsend if you are college student and have hundreds of files! I can search "financial analysis Marsh 2008" and find only the correct excel and word documents for this!
I like aero snap. On your Windows 7 system drag the title bar of your browser to the left or right? Notice there was a clear rectangle on what it would look like before it was moved? Now you can have 2 documents side by side.
As an IT pro I finally can do a system file check. Sooo annoying under XP. Sure we can use the OEM XP SP 2 disk but guess what? 70% of the files have been altered since 2008 because of Windows Update making the damn thing useless. So if your XP installation is corrupted I can not fix it :-(
But that is my opinion. If you hate the translucent aero you can adjust this and make it solid. I think it looks pretty and do not mind it. You can even make it look like Windows 95 if you want and disable aero.
All these things just the gui. Under the hood it is a vast improvement from the XP days.
With aero if these screenshots are correct. FYI they are for Windows 8.2 and not Windows 9. But if MS is re-adding it back to the previous it will be in the later.
What I have works fine and I see no reason to change.
I frankly could not care if it is a better OS if the one I have meet my needs fine. With 1/3 of internet users in the same boat with XP still in 2014 I know I am not alone. The real question is what is MS going to do now that computers are stable, secure, and fast enough and there is no night and difference from upgrading anymore?
To prevent piracy and sales of used Scada these require internet access to stay activated. We wouldn't want to deprive income now would we
These issues have been flagged for roughly a decade. I have ZERO SYMPATHY for anyone who gets taken over.
MSOBKOW this is your boss.
What do you mean it is a security risk to put this on the internet? Everyone else has no problem doing this and I never heard of anyone being hacked. Like a billion dollar company would ever design such a thing when an internet connection is required to stay activated. Are you telling me that firewall you said we needed doesn't make is impenetrable?! Why can't you secure it? Do I need to hire someone who will?
Java could have been fixed when they found out that their sandbox execution back in the early 2000's had so many holes that it made a sieve look like a glass. And by fix, I mean nuke it from orbit and rebuild it from the ground up instead of issuing bandage after bandage, on something they knew was already a mess.
Coulda Woulda Shoulda...
It's interesting how technical debt has interest, sometimes so high you can only keep doing the equivalent of "pressing more money" and see where that takes you (as if everybody didn't know).
As the saying goes money talks shit walks. It is more true in business than anywhere else. Technical debt means nothing. Financial debt and costs mean everything. If it costs money to fix the answer will always be NO even with long term financial benefits.
Some people tend to leave IT and go into management or other technical but not computer fields like statistics for reasons like these that drive people up the wall.
Really? AV protection is your trump card for using the PC? Rather than preventing system compromise, I'd say your system is compromised by the AV software.
If you think AV protection is of any use whatsoever, you are the fool.
Ahh the lie that gets repeated here so often therefore it must be true.
According to the professionals who certify AV software I would say a good AV suite protects a PC 98% of all exploits! That does not sound useless to me.
Avast does not degrade performance at all and I would say you are the fool if you run without updates without and do banking. Not me.