The news coming in now is that Microsoft is definitely on the path to pulling the plug on support for Windows XP, Office 2003, and Exchange Server 2003 come April 14, 2009. With the end of support for these products, patches and fixes for flaws found on these software will end also, although Microsoft says it will provide security updates until 2014, if it thinks they are critical or necessary.
Of course, there is always the option to shell out more money and buy “premier” support and “extended” support for each of these programs separately from Microsoft. Now there is the tendency to think that this is just another ploy by the software company to “force” businesses to upgrade to the vast array of Vista products and their popular incompatibility with many software and applications already in use in many small business environments.
What does this mean for you the small business owner with Windows XP Computers?
There is, unfortunately, limited choices out there. It is probably going to be easier to buy new computers simply because the beast called Vista is not built for your ordinary PC. For starters, it requires at least 1GB of Random Access Memory (RAM) to give a decent performance.
There is the hard drive requirement – at least 40GB is needed for Vista. Compare that with the 128MB of RAM and 2GB of disk space required by XP. Windows 7, the next “big” thing from Microsoft is not expected for another year, so there is no option to wait. It is better to start slow and migrate to the thing called Vista.
Be warned, however, there is a steep learning curve awaiting the new user, and a lot of frustrations.
Then again, you can take this opportunity and embrace new technology to grow your business and save money by using thin clients. We will discuss this option further in the next installment of this post.
