Microsoft To End Windows XP Support After 365 Days From Today

The widely popular Windows XP has been around nearly 12 years. But technology has evolved leaps and bounds. And we need to stay updated with the latest technology to ensure security, compliance and manageability of softwares. Today will mark the Day1 of one year countdown(8-Apr’13 to 8-Apr’14) after which Microsoft will not entertain any support for the most popular Windows XP OS which has been supported for 12 years (next April). So, Microsoft kindly urged the users of Windows XP to start moving to a more modern OS like Windows 7/8 which are inherently reliable, secure, speed, hardened, flexible.

What this actually means is “Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will go out of support on April 8, 2014” wrote Microsoft in a blog post,

“On April 8, 2014, we will end the extended support for our commercial customers and we will no longer provide security updates for commercial or consumer customers.”

Shall I just upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8?

No, this is not possible. The users should do a clean install which means that they should backup all the data. They may also need to do a complete reinstall of all the applications compatible with the modern OS they are migrating to.

So, what does “End of Support” mean to customers?

After the above mentioned date, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates from Microsoft side.

Are there any offers from Microsoft Side?

Yeah!! There is some good news from Microsoft. If you are a small or medium sized business currently running Windows XP Professional PCs, you can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro and Office Standard 2013 at a 15% discount now through June-30,2013 as part of Microsoft’s Get2Modern offer. which is only available on up to 100 licenses each of Windows 8 Pro and Office 2013 Standard editions.

Read more details here & here