Will now only provide “extended” support until April 8, 2014.
Much to many PC users sadness, Microsoft has announced it has ended “mainstream support” for Windows XP, meaning that there will be no more free per-incident support.
Win XP, first released in October of 2001, now enters the “extended support” lifecycle stage. The total Microsoft lifecycle support cycle lasts 15 years, with mainstream support, extended support and custom support each lasting five years apiece.
XP users will still be able to get security patches automatically through Windows Update. In addition, it doesn’t cost to call Microsoft if you have a problem installing Windows XP. However, calling Microsoft about other support incidents will cost the user money.
The news is sure to rattle some, especially IT professionals of whom 97% said in a recent poll that their companies or organizations are still running XP. Surely much to Microsoft’s chagrin, 83% of them also said they’d skip Vista and wait for a stable Windows 7 to be released.
From the survey:
The vast majority of participants (84%) do not plan to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year. The most likely path for participants to adopt Windows 7 will be to go directly to this new release and skip Windows Vista. Those few participants who will be upgrading to Windows 7 in the coming year say that avoiding Vista is their primary motivation for the upgrade. Most (67%) state concerns about Windows 7 with 88% of those worried about software compatibility. Economic factors are contributing to the delay in Windows 7 adoption for almost half of all participants. Participants are generally more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than staying with the increasingly out-of-date Windows XP.
I made the jump to Windows 7 a few months ago and have been happily surprised. It’s way better than Vista, though I do admit missing the control, navigation, and simplicity of XP.
Either way, today marks the beginning of a slow death for XP.
jared@zeropaid.com
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while Win7 is better than Vista, it still has too many convoluted ways in which it operates. As Jared said, in simplicity it ain’t XP.
Don’t think I will be rushing in installing Windows 7 when it’s officially released.
I thought that MS was going to make a stripped down version of Windows 7 that was just a simple core, and then build up from there.
I know about finding things, on my friend’s Windows 7 it seems like they want you to look for things using a search box instead of using menus.
I’ve had no problems with Vista for the most part, I’ve found it to be a more stable OS than XP. The biggest issue I have is that when a codec fails to render a video to make a thumbnail, explorer crashes. So any corrupt video, or video in transition has the potential to crash explorer. The second problem is the ram usage. The interface has some quirks, but I’ve found more improvements in the interface than annoying quirks.
@1cooldude
yeah your right always XP will be the best of Microsoft
even w7 will not change the fact
Vista sucks! I tried it and put the final version of vista on my computer….it was so slow I put xp back on again. And this WAS a fast computer for vista, no one of those computers that would barely run it, but it STILL SUCKED!
So please, no idiotic comments about it not being on a fast computer! it was and didn’t make any difference!
I will try out win 7 and give it a chance. But if it is still crap I will stick with xp for as long as I can.
@joe bloe
One of the major drawbacks of Vista is its huge resource requirement both in memory and processor power. I had installed Vista Ultimate on an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 / 2 GHz processor ( mobile ) with 4GB of RAM and the difference between XP and Vista was huge. I ran some application tests on the laptop and after about 5 days I decided to uninstall VIsta and replace it with XP. I am sticking with XP and Ubuntu. that’s it.
@1cooldude…yeah, hopefully after getting screamed at by a lot of people who bought vista, maybe win 7 will be a lot better….at least I hope so.
@1colldude
Almost forgot about RAM usage…I did the same thing, though gave win 7 a chance when it was first leaked and was happily surprised.
mr. gate is lack of idea that how should os build now! i think he already give up vista and think 7 will work like xp… lol… i don’t think so, xp is the best os in the market and it will last longer than every os… before new os come out to the market…
XP is the last Microsoft OS I will ever use. From 2007 on, it’s Linux all the way!
omg i cant wait for the next version of the xbox…. i have to save up ffor this!!!!
First Piratebay and now XP. Gods going to get a broken nose for letting things get this bad
I’m still using DOS, its great no patches or crashes blah blah blah…… Get with the times. FFS does anyone here remember when XP was released? It was a bag of sh*t until it was patched to SP1 and even then. Vista is like ME – Give it a miss, but hopefully WIn7 will be good, RC1 is ok, a few glitches but still looking better than Vista at this stage. It took years top get XP right, give win7 a chance.