Support for Windows XP SP2 Ends on July 13

[Vajras]

 -- Support for Windows XP SP2 Ends on July 13

Though MS will continue to support XP SP3 through April 2014, the Microsoft monthly security update scheduled for July 13, 2010 marks the last time the company will issue security updates for Windows XP SP2.

This means you will no longer receive patches for vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE), either; the company has no mechanism for delivering IE-only patches.  Because MS normally issues IE updates only every other month, XP SP2 users have received their last IE updates barring the release of an emergency IE patch on or before July 13. 

You are urged to install XP SP3 to keep receiving security updates. MS will continue to support XP SP3 through April 2014.

Link

[Editor's Note]
Microsoft is being more than reasonable in supporting WXP SP3 for as long as it has announced. At the same time, it is important to realize that Windows Vista was a human-computer interface catastrophe and that in some (but many fewer) ways Windows 7 has not been all that different from the same perspective.

[miw]

The biggest impact of XPSP2 going off support on Jul13 is that Jul 13 will mark the end of support for Internet Explorer version 6.

Given that IE6 is the last really broken browser left out there in any quantity (IE7 and 8 are much better) There will be many many web developers starting to think the long nightmare of having a common browser that doesn't understand CSS properly that they have to support some way, not to mention lots of unfixable security holes might start to be over.

But my employer still only supports IE6 on the intranet. Lots of enterprise applications still not updated to support IE7+ or Firefox or Safari or Opera or Chrome....

The nightmare will continue a while, but I stopped doing dropdown menus that support IE6 some months ago.

--mark.