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Good lord what a strange comment.*Which is more inconvenient, having to use a completely different device altogether, or just clicking “XP” or”Ubuntu” at boot… What kind of “oddities” does that add? Once booted into the chosen OS there’s absolutely NO difference. Except it’s MUCH easier to check your mail or go online.. just reboot! Fact is that there really IS a “compelling reason” to stick with XP.. and that is SPEED, and hardware requirements… The system req’s for Vista and on up are vastly higher, and franlkly, any system running XP for more than a few years can NOT run those OSs. Period.

It’s astonishing that Xp has lasted 12 years, but if something’s good, it will indeed show staying power. It’s managed to outlive the mess called “Longhorn” (You know, like Pinocchio, except substitute nose for horn, and Vista for Longhorn!), and took us to Windows 7. It’s a real shame that M$ has tried to emulate Apple , with their new major OS now every 4 months.. formerly it was every year, now it’s not even a half year. And they have been fixing all these things that weren’t broken. For MS to even consider emulating this bunch is worrisome. Microsoft, however, are expert at Windows. I hope they just stick with that, and allow Windows 7 to run it’s full course.
XP is hardly out of date either, as far as running programs is concerned. I wouldn’t ever consider going online with it (!), but who says you ever need to? Win 7 or 8.1, or all your little “devices”, are fine for that. I use it for Visual Pinball, and it works like a charm, in large part precisely *because* it is so old. There’s no “new improvements” that get in the way of running all my older pinballs, either. Multibooting is so easily facilitated nowadays that one only need set that up, and if it is confined to a home network, you are perfectly safe. Any exploit would be discovered by your fully updated AV on Win 7 or 8.1 anyways.
Mainly, though, when it comes to securing Windows XP in the future,. how’s this? *unplug the network cable*!

Windows Secrets is so obviously US based/biassed in its articles and when looking at contributors’ locations. I mean, Queen’s English would spell it “re-emphasised”. But aren’t we being a bit too pedantic/precious over words when what’s important is the strength of the drawbridge to our digital castles. We’ve all seen the translated-from-Chinese gobbledegook masquerading as manuals of electronic products.

But do these goodies work? Some do fantastically. Others, well… and in the latter, I have to agree on the evidence seen here not Boxcryptor.

But long live US know-how on MS Windows!

Perhaps you missed the obvious.. The error was “You will *loose* access to your encrypted files”. That is no small “dialect” difference, but a strong grammatical error, all too common in people who should know better
You *did* catch the error, did you not?
The OP’s point was that in a company that deals in security, a glaring error like that does not inspire confidence in other areas of their service…

My point was that if it were a Chinese or other translation error I would be less concerned, as , indeed, it does not reflect on the rest of the company’s service. It is, however, a common *english speakers* error, so there is quite a difference.. If english is your FIRST language, this little attention paid to the text of the info DOES cause concern.
And , furthermore, when writing comments it is hardly important if some typos get in the way. It is quite a different matter in a legal contract, such as a(n) EULA, which is where “Loose your files” appeared ..

For something as important as encryption, you need to be able to trust the people doing the encryption. If they are really trustworthy, then one clue about that is that they will make sure that you believe that you can trust them.

They were sloppy with this screen, which makes me wonder what else they are sloppy with, including perhaps the possibility that they have a back door built in somewhere. I mean, they aren’t charging you anything for the service; they have to make their money somehow.

I’m not saying that they can’t be trusted; but they need to go out of their way to show that they can be trusted. That’s what a trustworthy person does by default.

You are quite correct, and the type of spelling error leads me to believe that this is an english speaking, American based company. If so, that is even worse.
Your point can be re-emphasized by, say, one’s visiting a lawyer who demonstrates bad spelling or grammar. You’d immediately get the impression that if he had not paid any attemntion to these things in university, he could well have glossed over, or worse, read inaccurately, the legal documents affecting, possibly, your well being and security.
.. Time for a visit to the office across the hall?

My level of trust seems to go down a notch when there is a failure in English:
35741-12-12-2013-10-48-19-AM

Hyuk! That is far and away the most common spelling atrocity I see. It is, in fact, so common that I think that someone in the schoolboards was playing “fast and lose” with the english texts, and perhaps tried to save money by importing their english grade school textbooks from China !

Doccus: that is a very interesting point! I wonder if you tried to use another PC with another installation of Boxcryptor would it be able to decrypt your files from the cloud? That’s something the article should address.

In my other reply I didn’t address your point. I think it is a given that no two installations of Boxcrypter, or any other encryption software , would ever have the same algorithm. I mean, if they did, it would be like a lock service selling locks all with the same key!

Well, before leaving my comment, I had considered a USB key with the application on it, which would then contain the cipher, but, hey, realistically, just how many people walk around all day with a USB key in their pocket and don’t eventually end up just forgetting it at home..
….until.. that fateful day. When the SHTF and your beloved Vista PC goes up in smoke (sorry couldn’t resist!)
But, seriously.. unless you have something like, say, a keybob USB key, your likely to be SOL…

This is totally, and absolutely, useless! The algorithm is stored within the application that does the pre-encryption.. ON the harddrive on the main PC! Did you not say that the purpose of off-site backups is protection due to loss of the main pc, or it’s harddrives?
Just how are you going to decrypt these cloud-based files after something like that?

Hi Woody…
‘er.. quote…’
“Most of us who upgrade to Win8 from Windows XP, Vista, or Win7 will buy a product key and then use the “online-upgrade experience” to move up to Windows 8 — all you need is an upgrade key and an Internet connection.
”
‘and er… end quote..’

.. and an indestructible external hard drive , I would hope

RE: the Dot Net 4 part of your patch tome….
I am happy to FINALLY get some relief with this issue.. .Finally , suggestions that offer some possibility of hope…!
Dot Net 4 has completely HOSED my system (vista basic SP2).. and I have tried the asking at the MSDN forums, other M$ forums, other help forums, as well as trying to reinstall all the updates, have run several restores, patches, tips and tricks, until the damage done to my system from trying to FIX it is worse than the original ‘infection’.. and , really, is there any other way to describe this ‘update’? I have been unable to install applications, run many programs etc etc.. and Microsoft apparently didn’t have a clue on how to fix it.

I’m going to carefully try every tip in that article.. and cross mah fingas!
Doc