Heed Our Warning and Upgrade from Windows XP

For years we have been recommending to our clients that they upgrade from Windows XP. Come April 8th, 2014 this is no longer a recommendation, it's a necessity! While April 8th may not be the end of the world, it is the end of your computer's world if you're still running XP because Microsoft is ending support.

If you are stubbornly holding on to XP, then you're not alone. In fact, as of a few months ago, XP still had 500 million faithful users around the world. Out of these 500 million users, it's likely that millions will choose to ignore our doomsday warning and continue using their XP computers on April 9th and beyond.

While you can technically still run your XP-enabled machine past Microsoft's end of service date, you will want to avoid this at all cost because running unsupported software puts your computer and your business at serious risk. The reason for this risk stems from Microsoft no longer providing security patches. Ever since XP was released, there has been a team at Microsoft constantly developing new security patches and making them available for download in order to protect user's computers.

These security patches address the latest security threats on the Internet, and on April 8th, these patches will no longer be provided, which means your XP computer will have to fend for itself against every hacker in the world that has April 9th circled on their calendar, hoping to take advantage of 500 million easy targets.

The team of software developers that have kept your XP computer safe for all these years will be transferring over to proving support for Windows 7 (which will expire in 2020) and 8, and you should too because these two operating systems are much more secure than XP. Due to XP's popularity, it's still the world's largest hacking target, and therefore, the sooner you jump the sinking ship the better.

Not only will upgrading from XP to Windows 7 or 8 provide you with better security, if you're using XP with new technology, then you may even see a performance boost accompany your upgrade. Running new applications on an operating system like XP, which has been around since before many popular technologies were even conceived, is counterproductive. We understand that many people are resistant to change, but in this situation, resisting the pressure from Microsoft to upgrade is futile because it will put your business at risk.

You could wait to upgrade until April 7th, but the nature of technology is that upgrading sooner will provide you with better security and increased efficiency. Whether you upgrade from XP now or in April, the important thing is that you no longer use Windows XP come April 8th, 2014. Computerware can help you upgrade all of your computers from XP to newer and more secure operating systems like Windows 7 and 8. We can also find strong security and productivity solutions to compliment your new OS so that you will get the most out of your upgrade. To have Computerware make your computers time travel from 2001 to present time, give us a call at (703) 821-8200.