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Subject:RE: Problem with my XP system - Question From:Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:"al -at- geistarts -dot- com" <al -at- geistarts -dot- com>, 'Jim Jones' <han4yu3 -at- gmail -dot- com>, 'Techwr-l' <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 27 Dec 2013 16:16:37 -0500
Al Geist wrote:
> Final end-of-life for XP only means that Microsoft will no longer support
> this operating system. It doesn't mean that everything stops on systems that
> have it installed.
Well, that's mostly true, but it's only part of the story. The consequences of end of support are quite different for an OS than for application software.
You can continue to use an application well past its EOL as long as long as it is compatible with the OS you are running and nothing disastrous will happen.
But the OS has the primary responsibility for system security, and when the security patches for Windows XP stop in April no more vulnerabilities will get fixed via patches because there are no more patches. When new exploits are let loose to take advantage of XP's inherently lower level of security (Windows 7 and 8 have major improvements in preventing intrusion), those exploits will be unanswered. It's not a matter of _if_ new exploits are unleashed, it's _when_. Security experts supposedly have seen some indication that hackers have been "saving up" exploits that target XP vulnerabilities until there will be no more security patches coming from Microsoft. This is the real deal, folks.
Personally, I would not invest any time in trying to resuscitate a Windows XP installation that has gone sour. I'd bite the bullet and do a clean install of Windows 7 (if I could find a legitimate license to buy) or of Windows 8/8.1. The gotcha, though, is that a lot of older applications have compatibility issues with post-XP Windows versions and and a lot of older peripherals do not have drivers that are fully compatible. A lot of users are going to find that putting off OS upgrades for 6 or 7 years means that they have a lot more upgrading and replacing to do now.
-Fred Ridder
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