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Microsoft Sounds Windows XP, Office 2003 Death Knell

April 11, 2012 By Solon Harmony Dolor

The imminent End-of-Life of Windows XP and Office 2003 is closing in.

In a post on the Windows Team Blog, Microsoft has just reminded us that they will stop issuing patches to the Windows XP operating system and the Office 2003 productivity suite. This means that Windows XP and Office 2003 will officially not be supported by the software giant in the near future.

Microsoft will drop Windows XP support on April 8, 2014. The official 2-year countdown until that deadline began this Saturday, April 7, 2012.

Microsoft wrote in a post dated Monday, April 9, 2012:

“Today, we want to acknowledge the two-year countdown to the end of Windows XP and Office 2003 support, which was this past Sunday. If you still have some PCs running Windows XP and Office 2003 in your organization, now would be a good time to start migrating them to Windows 7 and Office 2010.”

Now you may be asking why Microsoft mentioned Windows 7 and Office 2010 but not Windows Vista and Office 2007. Should you be asking that, particularly about Vista? We all know it was not that great. Personally, when Vista came out and I tried it on my computer, I went back to using XP. Office 2007, on the other hand, was great, especially when compared to Windows Vista and its supposed upgrade from XP.

Moreover, Microsoft itself is apparently admitting that Vista is not great. It has officially stopped mainstream support for Vista and Office 2007. Office 2007 was included, understandably, because Office 2010 is already out. Ending mainstream support for Windows Vista also makes sense because apart from the fact that it was not great, Windows 8 is expected to debut during the second half of this year.

What the end of mainstream support for Vista and Office 207 means is that the software will no longer get free updates from Microsoft but will only get updates for critical issues.

However, in my opinion, Vista is no loss. The passing of XP, on the other hand, is another thing. It was hugely popular and deservedly so even in the face of the release of Windows Vista.