The End of Support for Windows XP and Office 2003 is Near

[Bec]

The End of Support for Windows XP and Office 2003

On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will be ending all support for Windows XP. To learn more about how this affects you and your devices running Windows XP Professional, and how to have Microsoft provide tools for migration assistance click here.

[jIgG]

about time... Windows 7 is so good. 8 too for those who aren't scared of having to re-map their brains

[kinky_jack]

Pardon my cynicism, but Windows stopped supporting XP eons ago. My partner is still using it - they're too damn stubborn for their own good - and they have problems all the time. Maybe this will be the catalyst for me to get them to finally migrate over to Windows 7. And hopefully I'll be loved for it.

Thanks for the heads up Bec.

[dirtyratstudios]

I use XP on my desktop PC and never have problems. The way things are going for Microsoft they should continue supporting XP. It seems a bad move scrapping a product that many people still use when so many are ditching Windows already. It'll just encourage millions more to jump ship. There's also the environmental cost. Millions of perfectly good PCs put on the scrapheap.

[nickbaer]

OSX Mavericks killed my Office 2008, so now I am OpenOffice.org all the way.

And so much happier!!

[kinky_jack]

Oh yeah, Open Office rocks. I'd never tough MS Office again after using Open Office.

I agree, Windows XP is a good OS. Now that I look back I did prefer it over Windows 7. I changed over about 3 years ago. I was daunted by the switch because I had been using XP for almost 10 years, but have grown accustomed to 7. When Windows XP worked, it was the best MS OS I've used.

My biggest issues with Windows 7 are silverlight and flash based. There are a lot of incompatibilities. I can't even stream Netflix properly on a Quad Core 64x AMD with 10GB of RAM. Talk about annoying.

I wonder if 8 is any better in that regard. Is it?

[Bi4life]

The End of Support for Windows XP and Office 2003

On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will be ending all support for Windows XP. To learn more about how this affects you and your devices running Windows XP Professional, and how to have Microsoft provide tools for migration assistance click here.

Hi Bec,
There is still hope (and Help) for Windows XP users:
Avast AntiVirus has announced that it will continue to support Windows XP for home and business users for at least the next three years (posted March 12, 2014).
Why is this important to webmasters and content producers?
Because, according to Avast,
"Studies show that nearly 30% of users worldwide still use Windows XP as of January 2014."
I order for Avast's support to be effective, they recommend the following:
"If you must keep using Windows XP, switch to Google Chrome. Chrome is arguably the most secure browser for Windows XP, and like Avast, is guaranteed to support XP moving forward."
You can read the entire article on Avast's Blog, here.
Hope this information is useful to someone,
Bi4life.

[nickbaer]

And those of us on Apple devices, have free productivity Apps (iMovie, iDVD, Pages, Numbers, Garage Band, ...) that are automatically updated at no cost, and operating systems OSX Mavericks and iOS, that share and stream files amongst our desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone devices.

I just got done buying a new laptop, new iPhone (after 3 years), and new iPad and MacMini (after 2 years). New iPad was half the price of the previous, new iPhone 12% less, MacMini 150% more because I souped it up with 3X processor speed and solid-state drive. Still, what I paid for the new iPhone, iPad and MacMini was close to the total I paid for the previous.

Sold old devices for 22% of what I paid for them, 2 and 3 years ago.

OSX Mavericks, Nov 2013, did break Office 2008 Apps. Free Apple Pages does the work of MSWord and Adobe InDesign, Numbers is the spreadsheet, Keynote is PowerPoint, iMovie is the consumer version of Final Cut Pro X for amazing video editing and sharing (YouTube, Vimeo, FaceBook, and more), iDVD I have not tried because I can still use DVD Studio Pro, and I have templates that promote consistency amongst my commercial DVDs.

[dirtyratstudios]

I use TextMaker for word-processing. It's very light and can save in OpenOffice format.

You can get the 2008 version free just by registering with SoftMaker. Details in the comments here:

http://www.portablefreeware.com/inde...=1463#comments

I still use plain text a lot as many documents don't need any formatting and I use TextPad (not free) for that.

http://www.textpad.com/

Another must have is the free tabbed notebook KeyNote NF. I always have it running...

http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/

[nickbaer]

And OpenOffice.org.

I use it (Spreadsheet) for my daily Stats taking. Takes a few minutes to get used to, but a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. OSX Mavericks broke Office last November. Between OpenOffice and free Apple iWork Apps, there's no void.

[nickbaer]

I just submitted a Contact Us ticket to a site, and on the reply, at the bottom, where it reported info it had gathered about my system characteristics, it said: "MacIntel chrome".

Made me smile.

Especially after 3 weeks of upgrading and configuring my three Apple devices, iPhone, iPad, MacMini, and reading about the chipset(s) Apple uses, and iOS this and that, it isn't just about Apple, it's about Intel!