The King is Dead | The Gadget Grill

Or at least dying.

But not really sick, however.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced that its Windows XP operating system, probably the most successful version of Windows thus far, and perhaps the most successful operating system of all OSes (to date) was about to reach its official end of life, with all support for it ending in 1000 days – April 6, 2014, to be precise.

To be honest, I think that that’s a very generous date on the part of Microsoft – there’s no good reason why you should continue to struggle with XP – or any earlier version of Windows, when Windows 7 is just so good.

Yes, you may offer the excuse that your hardware is so old and it’s unsupported by Windows 7. Well, yes, that’s exactly what that is: it’s an excuse.

Today you can walk into any of the major stores and buy a brand you laptop PC – not just a netbook, but a laptop – for less than $400. And that system will include a version of Windows 7. Why would you not buy such a system, really?

And if you really must keep the old box running, then install a version of Linux on it; you’ll be safer, and you should be able to perform everything that you can do on your aging XP system, but with a greater level of security, better features, and a more up to date interface to boot.

And yes, it’ll still be supported, which your XP installation will not.

Please don’t come crying to us when your apps fail, or your system has a virus that you can’t remove because the OS is no longer supported. We’ll merely say that we told you so.