When will Microsoft pull plug on your Windows or Office?

The impending retirement of Windows XP and Office 2003 shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As I’ve noted before, Microsoft has a well-established support lifecycle for its software products. It’s basically an agreement that the company makes with everyone who commits to Windows. The terms of that agreement don’t change often, which is an important assurance for business customers who tend to be conservative in their approach to upgrades.

For the next six months and counting, Microsoft will officially offer support for five versions of Windows for desktop and notebook PCs. Here’s the rundown, starting with the newest member of the family:
Windows 8.1

Microsoft’s official Windows 8.1 Support Lifecycle Policy treats this update as if it were a service pack for Windows 8. That means the lifecycle calculations start when Windows 8 shipped, in 2012.
This version is currently available only for Microsoft’s volume licensing customers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and hardware OEM partners. It will be available to the public as a free update and in retail packages on October 18, 2013.
Mainstream support ends: January 9, 2018
Extended support ends: January 10, 2023
When will Microsoft pull the plug on your version of Windows or Office? | ZDNet
 
. . . .another oh my god look at what that big bad Microsoft is doing to it's users. If you think they are bad then go with Apple. . .:cry:
 
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Just curious - and not in sarcasm, but, what exactly is this "support", particularly for XP, which I have not used for years.
 

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Mainstream Support means users will get security and other updates.
Extended Support is for corporate customers that pay for support after Mainstream Support expires and is not available to the general public.

Jim :cool:
 

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Just curious - and not in sarcasm, but, what exactly is this "support", particularly for XP, which I have not used for years.
I think a lot of it is security patches which are still being issued for all XP users, but will presumably stop in April 2014.

The scenario which has been reported in the tech press is when a future vulnerability is found in Vista/ 7/ 8/ 8.1, which Microsoft would patch for those Operating Systems, but where XP has the same problem and remains unpatched for a vulnerability which Microsoft have published details of.
 

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Hi there
some people get confused with this -- it does NOT mean that these programs stop working -- just no more updates / security patches.

There's no reason why for example if you are a basic WORD or EXCEL user that you need to stop using OFFICE 2003 -- this will probably continue working for the expected lifetime of the Universe (assuming the hardware is still around). For Basic spread sheets / presentations / word documents that don't make use of Internet content or are essentially "Stand alone" documents you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever --of course new features like multi-media content or HUGE file sizes might not be useable but that's not an issue for the majority.

With XP you can still use it SAFELY as a stand alone VM for as long as you want.

I think there's a lot of scaremongering over these issues -- I've got Office 2010 and have absolutely NO INTENTION to upgrade either to Office 365 or Office 2013 when Office 2010 leaves main support.

(In any case newer / upgrade versions aren't always "improvements". Just look at the zillions of Android apps where phone users are continually saying the Old version was far better than the "upgraded version". I actually prefer the clean simple interface in Office 2003 but have got used to Office 2010. If you don't need to upgrade applications then don't -- OS'es are a different ballgame though - but even here running on a VM should allow you to run whatever OS you like for as long as you like whether supported or not).

Here's a Windows 98 VM running quite nicely on Windows 8.1 (The windows update doesn't work of course !!!!).

Cheers
jimbo.
 

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Thanks for the response. Sort of answers my curiosity. So, with XP or Vista, it means very little. Security patches, were I running those OSs ,would not excite me too much anyway. The Hackers rise to the bait if there is any suggestion of them, from MS!
 

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Just curious - and not in sarcasm, but, what exactly is this "support", particularly for XP, which I have not used for years.

I have never used their support... not even 1 time. And I've been using Windows since the beginning.
 

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Hi there
some people get confused with this -- it does NOT mean that these programs stop working -- just no more updates / security patches.

True. The thread title is misleading.
 

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Just curious - and not in sarcasm, but, what exactly is this "support", particularly for XP, which I have not used for years.

I have never used their support... not even 1 time. And I've been using Windows since the beginning.

Really? You've never applied a security patch? You've never looked at a knowledge base article? You've never looked at their support forums? Ever?

Wow.

Thanks for the response. Sort of answers my curiosity. So, with XP or Vista, it means very little. Security patches, were I running those OSs ,would not excite me too much anyway. The Hackers rise to the bait if there is any suggestion of them, from MS!

Security patches can be extremely important, particularly if a worm is released that exploits them. At one time, you couldn't even put an unpatched XP machine on the internet for more than 10 seconds without becoming infected, doing nothing whatsoever.. Sometimes, you couldn't even finish booting the computer without being infected.

There is a lot of concern that hackers have been sitting on so-called 0-day attacks, waiting for XP to go out of support, so they can release their worms to effectively turn virtually every XP machine on the internet into spam zombies, or key loggers, or whatever... and there would be no response from Microsoft. No fix. No way to prevent it.

I imagine some anti-malware vendors might come to the rescue if it was bad enough, but even they probably don't want to keep supporting XP.
 

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Was that for me?

As I said, you refer to XP - I hav'nt used it for years. I don't see where I stated I don't use them. I have automatic updates configured on my OSs. I have also been diligant with antivirus programs. I have not had the very bad experiences such as yours. (During boot? I suspect that perhaps the infection nay have been there before you closed down.
 

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Was that for me?

As I said, you refer to XP - I hav'nt used it for years. I don't see where I stated I don't use them. I have automatic updates configured on my OSs. I have also been diligant with antivirus programs. I have not had the very bad experiences such as yours. (During boot? I suspect that perhaps the infection nay have been there before you closed down.

Perhaps you should pay attention to the quote attributions.
 

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Really? You've never applied a security patch? You've never looked at a knowledge base article? You've never looked at their support forums? Ever?

Wow.



LOL!! You got me there. I was referring more to the consumer phone support and the type of support currently available to IT professionals in the business world.

Yes, I have always kept up to date with security patches, and have on occasion browsed the knowledge base articles. I've never had to call Microsoft directly for support, though. These articles won't be going away after support ends, you just won't be able to call MS or get any more updates.
 

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