Microsoft’s Final Notification to Customers: "Support for Windows XP SP1 ends October 10, 2006."
I was rebuilding my home laptop over the weekend. It is a Dell Inspiron 8200 that came with Windows XP SP1 when I bought it. After installing Windows, I went to Windows Update web site to download security patches as well as Sevice Pack 2. Since I had enabled Automatic Updates on the machine, I noticed a balloon notification popping up, saying the support for Windows XP SP1 is going to end on October 10, 2006. Nice timing indeed just after my recent rant on the service pack issue.
This is very good for organisations who have automatic updates turned on as the end users will notice this and will remind their network admin of the upcoming deadline. I am worried about larger organisations though as they normally use Windows Update Services so their users are not going to get a notification on their work PC. So I just hope that one of their staff who uses Windows XP SP1 at home sees the notification and raises the issue with the infrastructure team!
The support period for Windows XP is explained in Microsoft’s product lifecycle policy.
