According to PC World, despite the announcement by Microsoft that it will no longer support Windows XP after April 8, 2014, the operating system remains popular with about 28 percent of PCs worldwide using it as of March. Much of Windows XP’s popularity is due to the poor response of Microsoft’s more recent operating systems, Windows Vista and Windows 8. Combined, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 constitute 11 percent of the PC market which is less than half of the venerable Windows XP market.
I Don’t Want to Switch from Windows XP
Microsoft is urging all Windows XP users to upgrade as soon as possible because it says that Windows XP is no longer secure against modern cyber threats. Windows 7 is considered a good alternative to Windows XP as well as Windows 8.1 which has fixed some of the bugs noted in Windows 8.
Even so, it looks like that most PC users with Windows XP can still function after April 8 despite the fact that will be the date of the last security update for the operating system. Microsoft will continue its malware protection engine until July 14, 2015. A number of third party cybersecurity companies will continue to support Windows XP including Malwarebytes and WinPatrol. Both Mozilla and Google will continue to support its Firefox and Chrome browser systems for Windows XP.
In sum, April 8 was not necessarily the drop dead date for Windows XP users. However, one should continue to use Windows XP at one’s own risk. Sooner or later it will be time to make a software upgrade.
So, what did you do? Upgrade? Wait? And if you upgraded, did you upgrade to Windows 7 or 8.1?
