


Security software will provide some limited protection, but as time passes such software will be unable to protect you. Can I still use XP once support has ended?īecause it will still operate after April 2014, you will be able to use XP, but it will be at your own risk. The time and expense involved in making sure programs and hardware work on all the versions of Windows out there means that extending support to XP after its end-of-life date will be cost-prohibitive for most developers.

Furthermore, once Microsoft stops supporting XP, other software companies will follow suit with their own products. Any security flaws exposed by hackers will no longer be fixed. However, the end of Microsoft support means there will be no security updates from that point forward. While “end of life” sounds final and irreversible, understand that your XP computers will still function on Apas they did on April 7. Even though XP’s end-of-life date has been extended several times, this is really and truly the end. In fact, Microsoft has not released any new features or security updates for XP in more than a year, effectively ending mainstream support. In Windows XP’s case, “end of life” signifies the end of Microsoft support for everything from updates to customer service. What does that mean for people still using XP? What’s more, many people still run XP simply because after more than a decade, it’s what they’ve become accustomed to using.īut every life cycle must end eventually, and for Windows XP, that end date is April 8, 2014. Windows XP has remained popular because it was stable, fast, powerful, and relatively simple to use. Despite a number of other operating systems available in today’s market, XP is second only to Windows 7 as the most-popular operating system around. That’s a lot of computers running an operating system that’s over a decade old. How popular? Nearly 40% of the world’s estimated one billion computers run Windows XP. More amazing, it isn’t just still in use, it is extremely popular! When Microsoft released Windows XP in 2001, no one could have predicted that it would still be in use in 2013.
