Microsoft has announced plans to
continue to support Windows XP anti-malware efforts through mid-April 2015. The
company is still moving forward with plans to discontinue general support for
the aging operating system this April, however.
Specifically, the extended support is limited to
anti-malware signatures in Security Essentials. It’s also worth pointing out
that after this April, XP users will no longer be able to download and install
the program. As such, it’d be a good idea to go ahead and pick up Security
Essentials (it’s free) if you have an XP machine and haven’t already done so.
Microsoft is pitching the extension as a move
designed to help organizations complete migrations from XP to a newer operating
system. True enough, it’s advisable to upgrade to a newer OS sooner rather than
later as they will have security updates on a regular basis for some time to
come. Full support for XP ends on April 8, 2014 at which point using up-to-date
anti-virus alone might not be enough protection.
To put it all into perspective, Microsoft Trustworthy
Computing general manager Mike Reavey said late last year that Windows XP is
six times more likely to be infected than Windows 8 despite the fact it has the
same malware encounter rate.
Even still, Windows XP commanded 29 percent of
the Windows market share as of December 2013 according to NetMarketShare. In
comparison, Windows 7 represented 48 percent of the market while Windows 8 had
only captured 11 percent. Vista lags behind
all other modern Windows operating systems at just four percent share.
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