Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Blog Feedback

Dear Freinds,

For my family and me this is a very special time of the year. We all do our best to make sure we are together, as much as possible, on Christmas. I know the same is true for many of you.

To all I wish a Merry Christmas and a very Happy & Healthy New Year in 2009. To those of you of the Jewish faith, Happy Hanukkah.

I will be taking the next several days off from blogging. This is a good time for me to ask you your opinion. I welcome your feedback on this blog. Have you found it helpful? Would you suggest changes? Please let me hear from you at a special e-mail account I have set up for this purpose. It is blogfeedback@brpcdoc.com.

Thank you.

Tom

The Browns River PC Doctor

The Boothbay Region PC Doctor

Monday, December 22, 2008

Windows XP: Night of the Living Dead OS

The following was taken in its entirety from the All Things Digital website. It certainly lends credence to prior posts which stated that Windows XP would be supported through 2014, in fact this article states that same thing at the end.

It's very interesting that Microsoft has gotten themselves into this fix, but comforting to those of us who have stayed with our Windows XP base.

Windows XP: Night of the Living Dead OS


Published on December 22, 2008
by John Paczkowski


XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, April 24, 2008

Looks like Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer woke up smarter again.

Microsoft had planned to cut off sales of its Windows XP operating system through the retail and original equipment manufacturer channels on Jan. 30, 2008–one year after the Windows Vista debut. But the poor reception given Vista and the unwavering loyalty of XP users caused the company to extend that deadline to June 30, 2008. A few months later, Microsoft extended the deadline further, to Jan. 31, 2009. And now, amid reports that more than a third of all new Vista PCs are being downgraded to XP, it extended the XP deadline again.

Microsoft (MSFT) will now stop distributing Windows XP to PC makers on May 30, 2009. ChannelWeb reports that while distributors must place their final orders for XP OEM licenses by Jan. 31, 2009, they can take delivery against those orders through May 30. And the company will continue to support the OS with security and other critical updates until April 2014 (that’s 13 years after XP was first released).

Which means it’s now not only possible to hang on to Windows XP long enough to upgrade directly to Windows 7 in 2010, but entirely realistic.