Windows XP–RIP

So, after years of anticipation, today is the day we say good bye to Windows XP. Today, XP has finallyi reached end of life (at least for most home and corporate users). The patches being released today are the last most users will ever see.

From today. XP is EOL. There will be no more patches, and from next month, patches released for Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.x will telegraph to the hackers where vulnerabilities in XP may lie.

Is it xxall gloom and doom? No – of course not. For some users, at least, Microsoft has agreed to continue supporting XP. The UK government recently announced such an extension although it came with a big price tag. And all those ATM systems that run XP are also given a bit of breathing space.

But what if you are a normal corporate user, or normal home user? Well, if all you do is just get email from GMAIL/Outlook.com etc, and maybe do a bit of Skyping with the grandparents/grandkids, you will probably be fine. But if you go to a lot of sites, using IE, and have a habit of clicking on links you find in Twitter, Facebook, etc – your risk begins soon. I liken it to traveling to a country with active Polio, or other diseases without having your shots. Yes, you may be just fine – but you may also pick up a very nasty disease.

So what should you do? If you are a home user, you really should move off of XP. My personal  recommendation is to move to Windows 8.1. If the new UI is too much pain, then either use Windows 7, or just buy Start8 by Stardock to get you over the Modern blues. If you are a corporate customer still running XP, you need to get your IT department to upgrade.

I am certain that there are a lot of users, some who are reading this blog post, who haven’t moved and who may not move. After all XP works, doesn’t it? Why spend money needlessly? The reason, simply, is risk. The longer you wait to upgrade, the more time the hackers have to craft attacks.

I loved XP back in the day. The early beta versions were full of promise, and after SP2, we saw that promise turn into a great OS. But it has come to the end of life. Let it go and upgrade.