14 DAY TRIAL // The ancient operating system Windows XP will be retired in less than 30 days, so all those who are still running this particular platform are strongly recommended to upgrade as soon as possible to make sure that their computers won’t become vulnerable to attacks.
Windows XP is still holding a 29 percent market share, which could be a sign that the transition to another OS version won’t be completed in time and many users would actually stick to their current computer despite all the warnings coming from Microsoft itself and its partners.
Redmond claims that the best alternative for Windows XP users is Windows 8.1, although the company admits that hardware upgrades are also necessary, which would obviously increase the overall cost of the entire process.
“It is very important that customers and partners migrate to a modern operating system such as Windows 8.1. Customers moving to a modern operating system will benefit from dramatically enhanced security, broad device choice for a mobile workforce, higher user productivity, and a lower total cost of ownership through improved management capabilities,” Microsoft states.
Security experts across the world are also warning that Windows XP is very likely to become vulnerable to attacks after April 8 and recommend users to upgrade to a newer platform as soon as possible.
Windows XP is one of the operating systems that will get updates this week as part of the Patch Tuesday rollout and experts explain that more vulnerabilities are very likely to be discovered in the coming months. However, without patches coming from Microsoft, they will be fully exposed to attacks, they add.
“Windows XP is affected by all five updates, and there is really no reason to expect this picture to change; Windows XP will continue to be impacted by the majority of vulnerabilities found in the Windows ecosystem, but you will not be able to address the issues anymore. Windows XP is getting its penultimate update and is now very close (just over 30 days) to its declared end of life date,” Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, said.
Windows XP continues to be the second top operating system on the desktop, even though nearly 13 years have passed since its official launch in 2001. Of course, this is just another sign that users aren’t yet ready to abandon XP and move to another OS build, so Microsoft really needs a campaign that would show users the benefits for moving to a newer platform in a much more effective way.