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Show SECTION (iKTil 1 MONDAY, MAY 19, 2008 iiiiH 1 Elyssa Andrus EDITOR 344-255- 3 eandrusheraldextra.com JJ r Microsoft Microsoft Windows Edition XP Home f IU VP Shortsighted nostalgia for At! Windows XP Rob Pegoraro THE WASHINGTON POST By the strictest definition, Windows XP has been dead since Jan. the day its replace30, 2007 ment, Windows Vista, arrived in stores and XP promptly vanished from most new computers. And yet by other measures, XP appears quite alive. its steep hardVista's issues y ware requirements, its strict measures, its sometimes-intrusiv- e security measures, its incompatibility with some older have given XP not products only a second life in the market but also a newly vocal and enthusiastic fan base. Boxed copies still sell briskly. This week, IDC analyst Al Gillen said that from 2007 through the first quarter of 2008, 87 million copies of XP had been sold worldwide, compared with 132 million copies of Vista. Computer manufacturers have responded by bundling XP on some of their units and selling "downgrades" to XP on others. Business and government users, critical members of Microsoft's customer base, have resisted Vista strongly enough to force Microsoft to push its deadline for retailers and computer vendors to drop XP from January 30 to June 30. But XP holdouts haven't only voted with their credit cards, they've also put their names on a "Save Windows XP" petition, hosted by the tech magazine JUU LEONARDRaleigh Cen TENARIANS COULD STRAIN BUDGETS WINDOWS, C2 alnik, an epidemiologist and gerontolo-gis- t at the National Institute on Aging in Maryland. In North Carolina, the cost to Medicare of a chronically ill patient's last two years of life can easily surpass $50,000, according to the 2008 Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. The healthier the state's older people remain, the more tax dollars will be saved. "The costs are definitely higher" for chronically ill older people, said Denise K. Houston, a researcher and assistant professor at Wake Forest University's J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation. "We are managing diabetes and heart disease, yet still having poor function, which leads to loss of independence earlier." Thomas Goldsmith About 95,000 Americans are now 100 or older, census estimates show, and their closely watched numbers are pre1 109, Alberta Thompson be- -' dicted to more than quadruple by 2030, reaching 1.15 million by 2050. gan life in the 19th century, How healthy they remain in old age lived every minute of the 20th and, despite some trou-.bl- e may have a dramatic effect on federal entitlements such as Medicare and getting around, remains Medicaid, health-car- e experts say. The sharp in the 21st. Until recently, Annie Laurie Williams, annual cost for treating elderly and disabled people under these programs 105, climbed up and down the stairs at is currently $400 billion, Congressional her home, part of her routine of daily exercise and a diet built largely on fruits Budget Office numbers show. The vital and vegetables. question: Will people in their 90s and 100s have longer periods of mobility and And Dr. Harold Eliason, a retired independence or just more years of disphysician who lives at the Forest at Duke retirement community in Durham, ability and dependence? "If we don't do a better job, this really celebrated his 104th birthday in February-All large group of people who reach advanced old age will be a burden on our three centenarians are trendset- health-car- e ters. system," said Dr. Jack Gur- THE NEWS & OBSERVER (RALEIGH, N.C.) A that urges Microsoft to See Observer & nine-memb- anti-pirac- of fer XP "indefinitely" (savexp. com). Some XP fans have gone further, asking Microsoft to abandon Vista outright. It can be heartwarming to see this display of adoration. But when you consider how much affection XP drew as Microsoft's flagship product, this newfound worship looks ridiculous. Vista has problems, but reverting to XP won't solve most of them. There's a lot to be said for keeping XP on an existing machine instead of upgrading to Vista; things are much cheaper and simpler that way. People running specialized software packages often have other reasons to stick withXP. But it's another thing to say that on a new home computer, Vista is so unacceptable for mainstream use that you'd be better off with its predecessor. XP had enough problems at its October 2001 debut, starting with weak security and inadequate tools for organizing your information, and the Internet has only gotten busier and more brutish since then. Even with all of Microsoft's patches including XFs third major Service Pack update", and the prosissued last week pect of continued security fixes News Alberta Thompson, 109, enjoys some quiet time in her room after playing bingo with other residents at Aversboro Assisted Living of Gamer, N.C., on April 16. Thompson is the only remaining sibling from her family. She was born November 5, 1898. See ELDERLY, C2 After 20 years, Ford returns to Indiana Gene Seymour NEWSDAY With most of our action movie icons, there are easily identifiable trademarks: John Wayne's pigeon-toe- d swagger and g drawl; Humphrey Bogart's facial twitches and muted trombone growl; Clint Eastwood's narrow squints and freeze-drierasp. Drop Gary Cooper's d laconic fortitude, Robert Mitchum's diffidence and Charles Bronson's brawny truculence into this discussion and you can summon waves of other exslow-rollin- d sloe-eye- iosyncrasy in Ford that can be stretched to satiric excess. (Yes, there's that scar on his chin that some say is his most distinguishing characteristic. Forget it. You can't exaggerate a scar the way you can, say, Burt Lancaster's toothy grin.) Still, in a and (maybe now) era of movie stardom, it's just possible that Ford's very lack of a conspicuous trademark has helped extend his capital as an action hero well into the 21st century. On Thursday, a couple of months shy of his 66th birthday, Ford returns in what Harrison Ford is back as Indiana Jones in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" post-iron- 4 f v 1 - 1 ; I :; J; '. Lucasfilm, Ltd. -: may well be his most indelible cinematic incarnation in "Indiana Jones and the Harrison Ford? Hmmm ... let's see ... Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." This is the fourth time Ford has taken up the what is it that jumps out in front of you when thinking of one of the biggest action battered fedora, leather jacket and that d stars of the last years? What aforementioned bullwhip of his and the first would your garden-variet- y archaeologist alter-egVegas comic time in almost 20 years. use as fodder for a Harrison Ford impresYou'd think that if director Steven sion? Besides a bullwhip or a ray gun? Can't think of any, right? Neither can we. ' See FORD, C2 You really have to reach to find an id amples. two-fiste- o ;F1 1 11! 4 f 1 Come in and see why K AWA I "digitals" are the "most awarded pianos in the world! I2ev; Pianos from $2405! Baby Grands from $4533! Grands KAVAI and Digitals Reduced! months at Vo 3tJJ 0.A.C A ? t II 11 m m I .rill Dave "The Piano Man" anytime 3t S9-Gfl- 03f at n 11H1T w. MUSIC-CENTK- R 1006 South State Street Orcm Open |