Yes 20 years no problems for windows API. Look how old the Unix API is. Not Silverlight although most of that is portable straight to c#+WPF deployed via ClickOnce with a few hours' work.
We have a company that has IE6 and XP deployed to over 1000 workstations. IE11 does ActiveX still. We use it via WebTwain to scan documents from a web app via a drum scanner. It works very well.
Hardware is not a factor. Don't forget that x86 is well over 30 years old already, isn't even CISC under ISA any more and there is virtualization and emulation as well. I saw windows 95 booting on a wrist watch in the tech press the other day.
> Don't forget that x86 is well over 30 years old already
Don't say that too loudly. I've seen some 'passionate' Internet argument over how all of the terms AMD64, x86-64 and x86_64 are all wrong because it's really the x64 arch that we're all running on now. :P
We have a company that has IE6 and XP deployed to over 1000 workstations. IE11 does ActiveX still. We use it via WebTwain to scan documents from a web app via a drum scanner. It works very well.
Hardware is not a factor. Don't forget that x86 is well over 30 years old already, isn't even CISC under ISA any more and there is virtualization and emulation as well. I saw windows 95 booting on a wrist watch in the tech press the other day.