End of an Era

 

          Am sure most of us have "The Windows XP" as our favourite operating system and it's the best in both performance and visual levels. But its a sad news that the life support for Windows XP including Service Pack 3 would be plugged out on April 8th 2014. Lets look back at this marvelous era at a glance.

          Microsoft Windows XP is the first operating system coming from Redmond to combine the advantages of the Windows NT core with the ease of use and flexibility of the Windows 9x series. Basically we can state that Windows XP is the fusion of the best of two worlds: Windows 2000 & Windows Me. After years of promising, Microsoft finally did it: Windows 9x is condemned to death (although it was supported till 2003) so home users now have access to the unprecedented reliability of the NT engine. Windows XP has made the news so much since it’s inception it’s hard not to want to be apart of the Windows experience. Windows XP was internally referred by Microsoft as Neptune at first and later renamed Whistler before finally becoming ‘XP’.  

        After several years of intensive development Microsoft has probably released the most ambitious version of Windows yet - similar to what Windows 95 was to Windows 3.1. Windows XP will surely mark computing history while OEM and system integrators expect it to boost sales in these economic troubling days. Microsoft Windows XP is available in two different flavors: the Home and Professional editions. Behind the green or blue box lies exactly the same operating system with a few minor feature differences. The professional edition adds some extra business oriented features over the Home edition with the support of SMP systems, Active Directory and    IIS Web server. We’ve written our review based on Windows XP Professional. 

        But one point is undebatable: Windows XP is the most significant operating-system upgrade since Windows 95. And perhaps even more significant, Windows XP jettisons all the old DOS, 16-bit Windows, and Windows 95 code that has been part of every consumer-oriented Windows version up to and including Windows Millennium Edition. Certainly, Microsoft started on solid ground: The Professional Edition and Home Edition of Windows XP are derived from the Windows 2000 (nee NT) kernel. The Professional incarnation is aimed at high-end and corporate users. The Home Edition leaves out some more esoteric high-end features and has default settings for less technical users to minimize confusion. 

       Even with it's system requirements of a Pentium II 233, 128MB RAM, 1.5GB Space plus the necessities such as the CD-ROM and sound card, Windows XP stood out among the rest in some cases, and a disappointment in other cases. 

        According to web analysis data generated by W3Schools, from September 2003 to July 2011, Windows XP was the most widely used operating system for accessing the internet.

      Support for Windows XP without a service pack ended on September 30, 2004 and support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a ended on October 10, 2006. Windows XP Service Pack 2 was retired on July 13, 2010, almost six years after its general availability

Bill Gates with the Windows XP RTM Edition Disc

In accordance with Microsoft's posted timetable, the company stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista. However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs installing to ultra low-cost PCs  until one year after the availability of Windows 7 (that is, until October 22, 2010).

    On April 14, 2009, Windows XP and its family of operating systems were moved from Mainstream Support to the Extended Support phase as it marks the progression of the legacy operating system through the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy. During the Extended Support Phase, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates every month for Windows XP; however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes are no longer being offered.

    On April 8, 2014, all support for Windows XP, including security updates and hotfixes, will be terminated. Users will still be able to download old updates and hotfixes from Windows Update. Microsoft recommends that users upgrade to Windows 7.

   On January 14, 2020, support for volume license users downgrading their licenses from Windows 7 to Windows XP ends, making Windows XP officially obsolete.