Developmental work on XP will end in April, but all updates and service
packs that have been made up to that date will still be available for
quite some time after that for those who have to reinstall XP. I can't
find anything that clarifies when Microsoft will remove them from their
site other than its supposedly going to be years from now. That's vague,
but apparently no one knows for sure, not even Microsoft. One thing for
sure, April 8, 2014 isn't going to be the day of doom for XP or its
users. XP will continue to chug along and as long as good measures are
taken to keep it shielded from intrusions it can be used for probably
many more years. There are still some users of very early versions of
Microsoft and DOS who keep the old builds running for some of the old
programs and games that they prefer to use as well as some who are just
nostalgic. Users of MS-DOS 2.9, 3.0, 3.1 and so forth are still out
there and running their old programs quite well, so its entirely
possible to keep XP running just as well too, as long as good security
measures are taken and you keep your backups current.
I work for a nationwide grocery warehousing company that is still using
XP and the IT staff at our facility have heard no word on the company's
plans between now and April.
For those want to try the virtual machine route, know that once you have
XP installed and all updates and service packs installed as well as your
favorite programs, you can take a snapshot of your virtual folder with
your virtual machine software and save that on your backups so that
if/when you need to reinstall, even to a different computer in the
future, you can simply copy that virtual XP folder with all of its
updates and your software already for use into another virtual machine
program, saving you from having to download and reinstall everything again.
With care, XP will no doubt continue for a very long time because there
are so many who prefer it over the latest versions and because there are
so many preferred programs that won't run or run well on the latest
versions.
Here's what Microsoft has to say;
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/endofsupport.aspx. I
see that they too have now added one more year of virus signature
updates to MSE following on the heels of a few other anti-virus program
providers who declared over the last year that they will offer
anti-virus support for one year since the last time I read this page.
So, obviously April 8 isn't some sort of doomsday for XP, it just means
that users should have a plan or an option in the works to increase your
security and isolation of XP from trouble in mind by then or fairly
shortly after.

No Microsoft garbage used here, sent by a very satisfied Linux-Mint
<http://www.linuxmint.com/> user (a former disgruntled Microsoft user).
You could check out Vinux, Linux for the visually impaired
<http://wiki.vinuxproject.org/>.
Testimonials from Vinux users;
http://www.vinuxproject.org/what-vinux-users-think.
This email and any attachments are not virus scanned either, that's up
to you poor Microsoft users to deal with.
I'd rather be a wild and wacky Linux Penguin than a docile,
domesticated, Microsoft sheep.

Linux user 546139. <https://linuxcounter.net/cert/546139.png>


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