the mini Blog

XP Professional and Home are divided into two general product categories for Microsoft, namely business and consumer products. XP Professional, as a business product, will receive mainstream support for two additional years after the release of Windows Vista (whenever that may be). After that, Professional will have an additional five years of extended service (minimum), though this could be lengthened considerably if the OS update after Windows Vista does not ship within three years of Vista’s debut.
“For consumer products, security updates will be available through the end of the mainstream phase. For Windows XP Home Edition, there will be no security updates after 12/31/06.” Regarding paid support for problems unrelated to security patches, I was told that “Users who want to continue to receive support after the Microsoft assisted and paid support offerings have ended may visit the Retired Product Support Options Web site.“

I’m really annoyed about Microsoft for this, particularly because a lot of computers came with Windows XP Home (partially because it is cheaper) and still do. Our Sony VAIO desktop came with Windows XP Home, and no-one wants to pay lots of money to upgrade to Prof to get support because they don’t want to upgrade to Vista. This is Microsoft’s way of getting people to upgrade. So after I loose support on my VAIO (though I don’t use it much), it may mean that it will be open to new holes and exploits that are found in XP, to which I can’t download the updates for. A lot of people will be mad at Microsoft for this, mainly because less people will upgrade from XP to Vista than upgraded from 2000 to XP. Read the article for yourself as it goes into quite a bit of detail.

read more