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Microsoft Kills Support For XP SP2
Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft's announcement this week that it is preparing to end support for machines running Windows XP SP2 not only represents a challenge for the thousands of businesses still running SP2, but also is the end of an era for both Microsoft and its customers. It wasn't until 2004 that the final release of XP SP2 hit the streets, but when it did, it represented a huge step forward in security for Windows users. It wasn't necessarily the feature set that mattered as much as the fact that the protections were enabled by default and taken out of the users' hands."
The reason why this is a bad thing is because certain companies may have app compatibility issues with SP3 which is why they didn't install the upgrade in the first place if they were smart and discovered the incompatibilities during a beta phase of testing in their environment. Although I doubt there a many like that, they shouldn't be ignored and cut off simply because they have reasons to not upgrade their SP, especially when you consider the cost of MS corp licensing. This is the same reason why a LARGE majority of companies did not move to Vista and even now Win07 due to their 3rd party apps not working on those OS's. I've seen it first hand with financial software that costs literally millions of dollars to obtain corp licensing for. The developers of this software simply aren't ready on their end and there is no reason why a company should HAVE to upgrade just because MS wants more money or compliance (read slavery) from their customers.