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Tuesday, April 08, 2014

The end of Windows XP is finally here

Posted by David Bernstein


If it seems like Windows XP has been around forever, it’s because it has. It was released in August of 2001 and has been going strong ever since. In fact out of all the Windows powered desktops, 44% of them are still running Windows XP. Many people keep their Windows XP computers simply because they work or because the hardware may not be sufficient to run Windows 7 or Windows 8. Plus many corporations don’t want to spend the money to upgrade all the computers in their organization.

Microsoft has decided to pull the plug on Windows XP support on April 8th since its past its life expectancy and the want to focus more on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Plus they want consumers to upgrade and therefore spend their money on the newer versions of Windows. Also this will mean they won’t have to put in the time or effort to patch Windows XP if it’s not supported anymore.

Just because XP won’t be supported doesn’t mean you will have to stop using the operating system. What it will mean is that there will not be any more updates or more importantly security patches which will leave XP users more vulnerable to attacks as security holes are discovered in the OS. Windows XP was developed at a time when internet security was not as big of an issue as it is today. Windows 7 and 8 were designed with security in mind so overall they are much more secure operating systems. Plus Windows XP doesn’t support newer versions of Internet Explorer which are more secure than the older versions. In fact Avast Chief Operating Officer Ondřej Vlček says Windows XP users are "six times more likely to get hacked than Windows 7 users”.

So now the question is, will you be updating?

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