This is the final year of support for WinXP, Internet Explorer 6, and Office 2003
A year from now, the Redmond based software giant, Microsoft, will officially stop supporting Windows XP, a very old operating system, which one can say, is the most successful operating system from the company. This is because even after a decade of its release to the market, more than a quarter of the market, 38 per cent to be precise, uses Windows XP, and that is a very big number given the fact that this is only the computers that are online, which connect to the internet. There may be many more computers with Windows XP on them which do not connect to the internet.
Anyway, along with Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6, which comes pre installed on Windows XP, will also see its end a year from now. Other products with the last one year of support remaining include Exchange Server 2003, Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2, and Windows XP Mode in Windows 7.
Microsoft has been asking its Windows XP users to migrate to newer versions of its operating system, which are Windows 7 and Windows 8. But even after the support stops, it is very unlikely that all these computers will be upgraded. They will remain with Windows XP, which will make things worse. This is because the security patches and the updates for the operating system will stop and there will be nothing left other than the anti virus software to protect the computers, which is not very safe.
These computers should then always be kept offline so that they do not get malware or virus from the internet, and also because they will then not be able to become a part of a distributed denial of service (DDoS).
Anyway, the official support for the products mentioned above will be stopped on the 8th of April, 2014. So if you are still using any of these products, you have exactly one year to move your work to the next version.
Source: Arstechnica