It's time to bid adieu to your Windows XP operating system now. For real. Microsoft has put an end to the XP support today, putting almost 30% of computers used by consumers and business around the world at risk, with hackers squeezing the maximum juice off this twelve year old fruit. So people who've held off upgrading their systems from XP to Vista or Windows 7/8 - either due to the advent of smartphones and tablets offering those upgraded features or due to plain laziness - need to upgrade now more than ever after Microsoft retires this OS on Tuesday.


The 'end of support' announcement came last November, when Microsoft announced that it'll stop every service it's been providing towards Windows XP from April 8th. This gave a lot of time to business organisations and individuals to migrate their IT architecture on other upgraded systems. Amrish Goyal, Manager, Windows Business Group, Microsoft Corporation (India), states that nothing exactly happens to the systems running XP and that they can continue using the same - it's just that they won't be receiving any new upgrades or patches hence making their systems more vulnerable. This implies that the probability of a virus attack on an XP-running computer is way higher as compared to an upgraded computer with a later OS.

Windows XP came to change lives in 2001, and has been the most popular OS in all its twelve years it served Microsoft for, even though Windows XP devices stopped shipping since 2010.