23/01/14
Microsoft has announced
XP security essentials support will be extended to July 2015; extending
the original cut-off date of April 2014. When announcing this they stated:
“To help
organisations complete their migrations, Microsoft will continue to provide
updates to our anti-malware signatures and engine for Windows XP users through
July 14, 2015.”
Figures from research firm
NetApplications suggest that 30% of all desktop computers are still running XP.
Evidently this announcement will be a lifeline for many XP users.
However, do remember that: security patches, regular updates and bug fixes for
XP will still stop as scheduled on 8
April 2014, increasing the PC’s chance of a malware infection and making it
more important than ever to upgrade your machine’s operating system or to
purchase a new PC.