XP end of life nears as Microsoft moves forward without the Windows XP to tag along.
A statement by Microsoft said, "April 8 Windows XP users "will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft."
that translates to if something goes wrong with XP after April 8, don't think the people at Redmond will fix it, or even look at it.
An unforgiving deal for an OS that has seen 12 years of success at the Seattle-based Micrsoft.
Editor of ZDNet's All About Microsoft blog, Mary Jo Foley, says that a pulldown of a software impacting so many small and big businesses is quite troubling.
"There are a bunch of different reasons they haven't moved," Foley says. "Some can't, due to IT policies at their companies. In other cases, incompatibilities with peripherals, unique devices and software all factor in," she adds.
These changes can get rather complex and costs to make changes can add up in the computer world.
although the XP is to be taken down and hung on the wall as a piece of history, a whopping 29% still have it on their desktops and PCs.
But it's not just PCs, but other variants that have benefitted from the XP: "(We believe) that as many as 95% of ATMs have been running on Windows XP," says Jeff Dudash of NCR, the largest ATM manufacturer in the U.S
According to NCR, "financial institutions that do not migrate to Windows 7 immediately will have plans in place to maintain the integrity and security of their systems."
Interestingly enough, the XP came out when Destiny's Child and Crazy Town upped the Billboard charts. It outed a couple of days following Apple's iPod was announced. And you have to respect a PC OS that was a standalone in every sense of the word ahead of the smartphone revolution.
"XP had a lot of staying power because it was a good OS. When Microsoft updated XP with Service Pack 2, it really should have called that version by a different name," noted Foley adding, "it was basically a new OS with all the fixes they made to it."
