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-Bob Ringwald K6Y B V

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2139929/windows-xp-support-will-be-available-after-april-8-just-not-for-you.html
Windows XP support will be available after April 8—just not for you
Mark Hachman Senior Editor, PCWorld
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On Tuesday night, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, will
go to
sleep secure in the knowledge that his government’s Windows XP PCs won’t be
hacked
the next day. That doesn’t mean you will.
Meet Microsoft’s Custom Support for Windows XP, described as a last-ditch
effort
for big businesses to quite literally buy some more time to migrate from
Windows
XP to a more modern operating system. The U.K.
paid 5.548 million pounds
to Microsoft for an additional year of support to maintain critical and
important
security updates for Windows XP, Office 2003, and Exchange 2003. Otherwise,
Microsoft
plans to
end support for Windows XP
by April 8.
Microsoft has been warning about the demise of Windows XP support since
September,
2007, and Custom Support will extract a heavy toll from businesses that were
too
slow to act: up to $5 million per year (according to a report from Gartner),
negotiated
on a custom, per-company basis. Last year,
Gartner issued a report
claiming that the prices could go as high as $200 per PC, per year. The firm
called
such prices “punitive”.
“While many customers have already completed their migrations to a modern
OS, some
large customers with complex Windows XP deployments may not have their
migrations
complete by April 8,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in a statement. “To help
those
customers, we offer Custom Support for Windows XP as a temporary, last
resort to
help bridge the gap during a migration process to a modern OS, as the newest
technologies
provide the optimal chance to be and stay secure.  We are sure that our
customers
are taking the necessary steps to protect their customers.”
But that still provides an out to those who can’t facilitate a change.
According
to one report, for example, over
400,000 ATMs were running Windows XP
earlier this year, owned by a variety of banks who no doubt can afford to
pay for
a support extension. In March, a month before the deadline,
27.7 percent of all PCs tracked by NetApplications
ran Windows XP.
According to Microsoft, Custom Support requires an active Premier Support
agreement,
and customers should work with their Microsoft Account Representative
regarding their
Custom Support options for Windows XP. According to the company, Custom
Support is
designed for customers who need a bit more time to complete their Windows XP
migrations,
not as a way to extend life to an expired product. Customers must have a
migration
plan with quarterly deployment milestones and a project completion end date
in order
to be accepted into the Custom Support program.
And, to be specific,”there is not a consumer equivalent” of Custom Support,
Microsoft
confirmed.
Should consumers get the same break?
To date, Microsoft has given no indication that it will extend consumer
support for
Windows XP after the April 8 deadline, even though it has
extended anti-malware support
through July, 2015. After that date, any and all vulnerabilities found for
Windows
XP will
live on forever
, even though there are some avenues to
keep your PC safe
and protected after the deadline expires.
In some ways, the migration from Windows XP to a modern OS like Windows 8
could be
considered painless: As the number of digital photos taken grows, for
example, some
users have moved to external hard drives and cloud storage to store data,
solutions
that transcend a specific operating system. Applications written
specifically for
Windows XP, however, will require tinkering and compatibility modes.
For some, there’s the cost aspect: To run any Windows OS after Windows XP
(ideally,
Windows 7 or Windows 8
), users will basically need to invest in a new PC, minus the monitor and
printer.
Given the relatively low cost of PCs, however, users can buy a new PC for a
few hundred
dollars.
A more interesting question would be this: If Microsoft instituted a pricey,
last-minute,
pay-to-delay solution, what would consumers be willing to pay? $20? $50?
$100? $200?
If you run Windows XP, let us know what you’d be willing to pay in the
comments below.
Chances are you’re out of luck, but if Microsoft is willing to maintain a
database
of patches for big business, maybe they’ll throw a bone to the consumer
procrastinators,
too.


-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

"I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
-- Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra