The countdown has begun. The D-day for Windows XP is June 8, 2014. Microsoft said on Monday that after this date they do not plan to offer any type of support for Windows XP, their once flagship operating system, and that people should upgrade to Windows 7.
After the declared deadline, users who still run on the OS will not receive any security patches and hotfixes from Microsoft. Users will also not be able to contact Microsoft for support and if they do they will be asked to upgrade to Windows 7.
A blog post by Stephen Rose, a senior community manager for Windows client stuff at Microsoft said the reason for this is the presence of an OS much better than Windows XP i.e., Windows 7.
Jolted by the Windows Vista experience, a number of companies still rely on Windows XP to power their enterprises, despite Windows 7 being a good operating system and a major improvement on Windows Vista.
The key issue is whether these companies will stall upgrading to Windows 7 and directly upgrade to Windows 8 which will definitely be available by 2014.
This could lead to a situation where people are still using Windows XP after the declared date making their PCs vulnerable to security threats. Furthermore, many third party software providers are not planning to extend support for applications running on Windows XP, which translates to even more complexity and security risks.
Dispelling the upgrade fear notion, Rose said that Windows XP, which launched ten years ago, has had “an amazing run”, but that it is time to move on and “retire” Windows XP. He said it’s easy to upgrade to Windows 7 and that it could even result in cutting costs for businesses through its energy saving and automation features.
Quoting a recent report by Gartner, a US market research firm, Rose said that more than 50% of the organizations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early next year will not complete the process before Windows XP support ends and will incur increased support costs.
You can download the Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial and start testing your apps and hardware.
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