XP's aftermath

摘要

XP's end of sales date may be a non-issue to large, US-based enterprises. But in Canada, pro-grade products and automatic downgrade rights aren't necessarily the status quo. What's a Canadian small business to do next? If XP is currently up and running smoothly, your first option is to wait Microsoft recently announced it will offer extended XP support, providing security and critical updates, until 2014. "It is a mature product, the code base is stable and it is unlikely new issues will come up with XP unless they are security-related and Microsoft will continue to do the security fixes," says IDC analyst Al Gillan in an interview with Network World (US) John Fontana. Also, as XP is a mature product, say Gillan, companies already know how to support it.