After what has felt like an eternity, Microsoft has at last ended all forms of official backing for Windows XP, more than 12 years after the operating system launched, and still with a huge portion of users globally.
Today, April 8, 2014, marks the end of the extended support
phase for Windows XP and Office 2003. Mainstream support for these products
ended a full five years ago, in April 2009, and Microsoft has since been giving
users plenty of warnings that all support will (and now has) come to an end.
Over the past few days, Windows XP users running Microsoft
Security Essentials have been nagged with pop-ups indicating support will end,
much to the frustration of those who refuse to upgrade. However Microsoft has a
point with the consistent messages: from now on, Windows XP will no longer
receive any security patches, fixes or updates, leaving systems running the OS
potentially vulnerable to attacks through unpatched holes.
As much as 28% of the world's PCs are running Windows XP -
nearly four times the entire Mac OS user population - mostly due to business
and government departments who are yet to switch to a newer, and inherently
more secure operating system. Attackers will almost certainly ramp up attempts
to infiltrate these systems, making third-party security solutions more
important than ever.
Some large organizations who are yet to upgrade are paying
Microsoft for custom help bundles; the UK government, for instance, is forking
out £5.5m (~US$9.2m) for 12 months of Windows XP help. For the rest of us,
upgrading to a supported OS such as Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 is a much more
sensible option.
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