Windows XP: Support Terminates In 2014

Windows XP: Support Terminates In 2014

Microsoft is planning to terminate its support for Windows XP on 08 April 2014. In fact, Microsoft supports Windows XP for around twelve and half years and the supports has also been extended on several occasions; but the year 2014 looks like the deadline. 
 

Windows XP is still widely used and, without doubt, it's the second most popular OS next to Windows 7.

The mainstream support of Windows XP is ended in 2009; however, it's extended support still be continued and Microsoft is still creating security patches and sending them to its users via Windows Update services. 

And starting from 08 April 2014, Microsoft wouldn't offer any technical support and security patches for Windows XP; but Windows XP will be remain as vulnerable and the system may displaying the user is a victim and Microsoft may advise you to migrating to Windows 7 or Windows 8 - a smartest move for the people, who still clinging with XP. 

Below is the Life Cycle Supportive sheet from Microsoft for its OS, which can be accessed from: windowslifecyclefactsheet.  

If you're still interesting and need XP on your system, then you've to face more and more security vulnerabilities and further, finding a new hardware for XP machine would also be difficult. As the latest versions from Mozilla Firefox wouldn't support the older Windows OS, such as Windows 98. 

If you still love XP, and your system has the older software then you have to consider to upgrade a modern version of Windows by running Windows XP in Virtual Machine (VM), which is a software based, fictive computer. Virtual Machines may be based on specifications of a hypothetical computer or emulate the computer architecture and functions of a real world computer. The Virtual Machine runs programs in a Bytecode Interpreter (computing).

Windows 7's Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions are having a free of charge feature ' Windows XP Mode (XPM)', which is a Virtual Machine package for Windows Virtual PC containing a pre-installed, licensed copy of Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3, through which you can easily run Windows Virtual Machine.

To acquire XP Mode from said editions of Windows 7, type windows xp mode in the search box then enter.

 

Applications running in Windows XP Mode doesn't has compatibility issues, as they are actually running inside a Windows XP Virtual Machine and redirected using  RDP (Remote Desktop Services) to the Windows 7 host.

As the supportive for Windows 7 will be continued till 2020; so, it's better to migrating your Windows XP to a newer version of Windows. 

Linux OS is an another choice, if you wouldn't find a right one or really upset on Microsoft OS.