Windows XP Entered It's Last Year Of Life

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 12 Apr 2013

There’s less than a year until Microsoft will pull the plug on Windows XP. Extended support for the operating system will end on April 8, 2014. Office 2003 will also reach end of extended support on the same date.

The 1-year countdown of when Microsoft stops supporting the Windows XP operating system started earlier this week. You see, come the 8th of April, 2012, the Redmond-based software giant will end extended support for XP. This means that updates, patches, or fixes for the OS will no longer be released. It also means that you should upgrade to something newer. Windows XP, I remind you, has been around for 12 years. You’re missing out on many new features modern Windows versions have to offer. Technology evolved by leaps and bounds all this time.

Companies in particular should leave XP behind and move to something newer. If your company has not started upgrading yet, it should soon – that is, if it wants to meet the April 8th deadline. Less than a year is not a lot of time, not when you factor in that migrating to a new platform can take substantial planning and time to test and deploy across the entire business.

“Businesses still running Windows XP are missing out on the tangible benefits of modernizing their IT investments from dramatically enhanced security, broad device choice to meet the needs of a mobile workforce, higher employee productivity and lower cost of ownership by future-proofing their IT investments.,” said General Manager Erwin Visser.

“Many companies of all sizes have either already made the switch off of Windows XP, or are in the process of migrating over to Windows 7 and Windows 8, enabling them to realize greater possibilities for their business using technology that simply wasn’t possible in 2001. Those that haven’t yet started their migration process need to begin as soon as possible to ensure that they meet the April 8, 2014 deadline,” Visser added.

The bottom line is that extended support for Windows XP and Office 2003 will come to an end on April 8th, 2014. The OS was a great one – with the emphasis on “was.” It is now outdated and soon it will no longer be supported. If you’re still on XP, you should upgrade and you should do so as soon as possible.



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