It’s been a good run, but stragglers might consider finally making the jump to a more recent Windows operating system after reading this report. Tim Rains, Director of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, reminded Windows users last week on a TechNet blog post that Microsoft will no longer provide support for Windows XP after April 8th, 2014, effectively ending any security updates to the dying OS. Microsoft has already stopped supporting Windows XP Service Pack 2, and within two years “its malware infection rate was 66 percent higher than Windows XP Service Pack 3.”
Similar results are expected in the months and years following the final updates for Service Pack 3, the last supported version of Windows XP. Whether or not you like Windows 8, the fact is that Microsoft’s most recent OS currently has an infection rate that is six times smaller than that of XP. If you are worried about malware and viruses, newer is almost always better.
