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By Hugo Jean, Heptacube Inc.
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2010-07-13 17:14:53
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Users of 64-bit Windows XP are not affected, Service Pack 3 will be supported until 2014.
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It has been known for a while, and it is now official: as of today July 13th 2010, Windows XP Service Pack 2 is not supported by Microsoft anymore. This means this version of the operating system will no longer be the subject of patches and the vendor will not offer free support anymore. However, since the software has been around for nine years now, the Web is full of the knowledge required for fixing almost anything XP-related.
Drop of support for this version of the most widely used operating system worldwide is quite possibly a move which Microsoft hopes will help drive Windows 7 sales upwards, as it touts all its improved features. Windows XP will still be fully supported by Microsoft in its Service Pack 3 version until 2014, which should hopefully give enough time to enterprises and other customers worldwide to move to a more recent operating system.
Service Pack 3 has been available for free for more than two years, yet we still see a very large proportion of computers running the older version. People need to upgrade as it was inevitable that Microsoft would drop support for XP SP2, because it needs to shift its focus to their newer OS's to give better support for them. Using Windows XP SP2 from now on means a computer user is an easy target for hackers, thiefs and other cyber criminals, as unplugged holes in the system will certainly not be left unexploited.
Microsoft offers dedicated Web pages to users of Windows XP who either do not know which version they are running and/or want to upgrade to Service Pack 3.
Also important to note is that this applies only to the 32-bit (x86) version of XP SP2, as Windows XP SP2 64-bit is and will be fully supported by Microsoft up until Windows XP's end of life, in April 2014. There is no Service Pack 3 for 64-bit Windows XP.
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