Tech: WinXP SP1 Support ENDING

Subject: RE: Tech: WinXP SP1 Support ENDING
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Sep 06 - 11:54 PM

It is always surprising how many people haven't upgraded because they heard about a problem one time and decided never to make the upgrade. (That comes up regularly here at Mudcat, surprisingly enough, being that it is a computer-age community.) Retrograde thinking leads to diminished capacity in computing and a real security hazard.

SRS

Subject: Tech: WinXP SP1 Support ENDING
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Sep 06 - 12:31 AM

[Quote From PC Magazine Newsletter:]
Support Ends For Windows XP SP1 on October 10
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 is the last Patch Day for Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1. Thereafter there will be no security patches or hotfixes for it (except perhaps under special contracts not available to the general public).
Windows XP SP1 was released over 4 years ago on August 30, 2002, and was supplanted on September 17, 2004 by Service Pack 2. This removal of support has been a long time coming.
If you are still running a version of Windows XP prior to SP2 you are playing with fire. The next security flaw to come out will not be patched for that platform. Even though SP2 was understood at the time of its release to be a major security advance, a lot of leeway, including two years of additional support for earlier versions, was permitted, because SP2 caused a lot of problems for developers and forces them to adhere to new restrictions. Two years is enough.
Please upgrade to Windows XP SP2.
End Quote

Those who may have had problems with installing SP1 and/or SP2 should note that they have had a couple of years to sort out the early problems, and you must update to SP2 to continue to receive the automatic security patches after October 10.

Note also that Win2K is on the schedule for reduced support fairly soon, as such things go, although I haven't checked recently for the current downgrading schedule.

John