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Microsoft has posted a reminder that support for Windows 2000 Server and client and Windows XP SP2 will end on July 13. The company is suggesting that consumers and particularly organizations still using these OSes should prepare.

The posting on The Windows Blog offers some helpful suggestions and hyperlinks and says the company has created an end-of-support solution center.

Is it essential?

Mike Cherry, Directions on Microsoft’s vice president of research for operating systems, has a simple question: Is that really a big deal? His reply is that it’s not.

“I have a pretty jaded view of mainstream and extended support considering I’m not certain they actually offer anything,” Cherry said. “When you go and read what they offer, it comes down, in mainstream support, to enabling you to bring an issue you come across to Microsoft’s attention. They will decide whether or not they are going to fix it. It is quite conceivable that even in

mainstream support when you report it, Microsoft will say, ‘Thank you very much, we are going to leave it as it is.’”

Cherry said the issue is a calculation by Microsoft that fixing something for an older operating system may manufacture it more difficult for applications to work in the current OS, which is Windows 7.

“Because of those changes, it’s less likely that Microsoft will fix any problems with the older version,” he said. “Their reasoning is that to change the architecture will break too many applications that are relying on it.”

Patches Bypassed Before

He said some citizens see the issue as merely theoretic, but he added that on at least two recent occasions Microsoft has declined to patch vulnerabilities in Windows 2000. Thus, Cherry reasoned, users of the older OSes may have a false sense of protection about their coverage.

whether Cherry’s basic premise that users can’t…

Original post by dhiram