[D Graber]

D Graber

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This is one statement still on Microsoft’s website this morning about their promised / threatened end (on April 8, 2014) to security updates for Windows XP,:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/service-packs-download#sptabs=xp

excerpt:
“Support for Windows XP has ended.
Important: On April 8, 2014, Microsoft retired technical support for Windows XP, including security updates that help protect your PC. If you continue to use Windows XP, your computer might become more vulnerable to security and virus risks…”

This morning I was about to leave for an appointment and almost shut down one of my Windows XP computers. Instead, I had to wait for 11 minutes while Microsoft (from “It’s always been about us” Avenue in Redmond, WA) force-fed four updates to my computer.

I’m not entirely sure why Microsoft bothered. Once their “official” bug-out from doing XP updates went into effect, my anti-malware company (Avast!) announced they would happily volunteer to take over security update responsibilities for XP for several years to come, and they have done a great job for me, before then and ever since.

Mainland China was so incensed at Microsoft’s extortion pressure to intimidate the 60% of their Chinese computer users who run XP into upgrading their operating system that China passed a law forbidding the installation of Windows 8.x on any computer there. It also might have been that the Snowden disclosures of NSA snooping backdoors built into Microsoft software gave the Chinese added heartburn.

Anyway, as long as one watches Microsoft on what they actually do (instead of unreliably depending on what they say they will or won’t do), I can see no reason not to accept the updates from them (that they’ve announced they wouldn’t be doing) for as long as they continue to provide such updates. This is even though Avast! has made it clear that Microsoft’s security updates are less relevant as marketplace intimidation measures.

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