14 DAY TRIAL // Windows XP support will be retired in just one month, but Microsoft hopes that everyone will move to a newer operating system by April 8 and thus avoid getting hacked through unpatched vulnerabilities.
Anti-virus vendors, however, will continue to provide support for Windows XP for at least one more year, but Avast, the company behind the popular avast! Free Antivirus 2014, says that Windows XP support will continue to be provided for at least the next three years.
Of course, that’s great news for Windows XP users, especially because avast! is such a popular anti-virus product among users still running the 13-year-old platform, but it still raises questions as to whether the transition to another operating system should be performed sooner or not.
“AVAST will continue to support Windows XP users by creating protection modules and detections to cover vulnerabilities and other security problems for at least the next three years,” the anti-virus developer announced today in a press release.
“Our latest version, avast! Free Antivirus 2014, works well with older machines running Windows XP because of its light footprint, speed, and negligible resource consumption, making it a perfect choice even for older machines running Windows XP. AVAST protects more XP users than anyone else.”
Windows XP continues to be one of the top operating systems worldwide, and according to AVAST, many users would continue to rely on this particular platform for many years from now, especially because of the costs involved in moving to a newer OS version such as Windows 8.1.
AVAST, however, recommends those still running Windows XP to switch from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome and thus make sure that vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s browser won’t make their computers easy to hack.
“Something that can help those users be more secure is switching their browser. XP users often also use Internet Explorer, which can be a severe security risk. Right now, IE 8 is the latest version that will run on Windows XP, meaning that it’s 3 generations old and no longer receives critical updates,” it said.
The best alternative for Internet Explorer is Google Chrome, AVAST said, especially because it works very well on old system configurations, while also providing support for Windows XP. Google has also confirmed that it would continue to support Windows XP beyond retirement, so Google Chrome would remain one of the browsers still working on this OS version for at least two more years.