Will now only provide “extended” support until April 8, 2014.
Much to many PC users sadness, Microsoft has announced it has ended “mainstream support” for Windows XP, meaning that there will be no more free per-incident support.
Win XP, first released in October of 2001, now enters the “extended support” lifecycle stage. The total Microsoft lifecycle support cycle lasts 15 years, with mainstream support, extended support and custom support each lasting five years apiece.
XP users will still be able to get security patches automatically through Windows Update. In addition, it doesn’t cost to call Microsoft if you have a problem installing Windows XP. However, calling Microsoft about other support incidents will cost the user money.
The news is sure to rattle some, especially IT professionals of whom 97% said in a recent poll that their companies or organizations are still running XP. Surely much to Microsoft’s chagrin, 83% of them also said they’d skip Vista and wait for a stable Windows 7 to be released.
From the survey:
The vast majority of participants (84%) do not plan to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year. The most likely path for participants to adopt Windows 7 will be to go directly to this new release and skip Windows Vista. Those few participants who will be upgrading to Windows 7 in the coming year say that avoiding Vista is their primary motivation for the upgrade. Most (67%) state concerns about Windows 7 with 88% of those worried about software compatibility. Economic factors are contributing to the delay in Windows 7 adoption for almost half of all participants. Participants are generally more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than staying with the increasingly out-of-date Windows XP.
I made the jump to Windows 7 a few months ago and have been happily surprised. It’s way better than Vista, though I do admit missing the control, navigation, and simplicity of XP.
Either way, today marks the beginning of a slow death for XP.