Microsoft is discontinuing support for Windows XP and Office 2003 today. Some of you are getting popup messages from Microsoft reminding you of that.
This does not mean that Office 2003 and Windows XP will no longer work. They will keep on working. What it does mean is that Microsoft will no longer provide new upgrade, service patches, security patches and service packs to these products. Also they will no longer answer questions bout the software. However computer support people (those that fix PCs like me) will mostly continue to fix PCs with XP and answer questions. There are a few PC support people I know that will not work on anything but newest stuff. PC support people are like auto mechanics, we generally work on new and old machines and most often old as they are ones that start breaking
I have seen a statistic this week that 35% of PCs still use Windows XP. I know people that still use Window 98 and 95 and those had support dropped years ago. People still us Windows 97 which has not ben supported in years. Wal-Mart check out terminals still use Windows XP in most cases and 90% of Bank ATMs the statistics say use Windows XP.
You will be fine to keep on using Windows XP and Office 2003. Make sure you do keep a current antivirus program on your machine and that it stays updated.
If you decide to get a new machine look at how Windows 8 looks and runs before you get a machine with it. It is a totally different interface (look) and many people do not like it. You can still buy computers with Windows 7 which is still supported by Microsoft.
If you do get the pop-up warnings just ignore them and do not panic.
Dwight
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