It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft has announced that they will no longer support or release security updates for Windows XP after April 8, 2014, a move that will effectively kill off what has been arguably the most popular version of Windows ever released.
The company had originally planned to end support for XP years ago, but for various reasons they pushed back the “kill” date several times. It appears that the April 2014 date is set in stone however.
Of course XP machines that aren’t connected to the Internet will continue to work just fine as long as the hardware holds up, but the ones connected to the web will quickly become so bogged down with malware and security breaches after the security updates stop coming down the Windows Update “pipe” that they’ll become unusable.
What this means is we all have slightly less than a year to decide what we plan to do with the millions of PCs still running Windows XP. Do we attempt to upgrade them to the then-current version of Windows? My guess is that many of us will be able to do so if we want to. Do we simply toss them onto the scrap heap of computer history?
I’ll probably just install Linux on mine and keep right on using it until the hardware finally goes belly up. Why not? Linux is dirt cheap (as in FREE), easy to install and increasingly easy to use. I invite you to check out this post for more information on giving an old PC a new lease on life by replacing Microsoft Windows with Linux.