This week being the start of a new year is a good time to look at some upcoming events in the computer world. For many technical support people this year is going to be, as was termed by the inimitable Yogi Berra, déjà vu all over again.
Fifteen years ago a subject that was headline news almost daily was Y2K. For those of you who do not remember, that was the end-of-the-millennium scare that all our computer-based technology might stop working at midnight on December 31, 1999. 2014 figures to be almost as much of a technical challenge as Y2K all because of the continuing popularity of an old discontinued version of Microsoft Windows.
Not long after its debut on August 24, 2001, Microsoft Windows XP became the world’s most popular personal computer Operating System and continued to be so even after it was discontinued in 2008. Now, almost six years later Windows XP is still holding tenaciously to about a third of the Operating System user base, and therein is the problem. This year Microsoft will discontinue support for this venerable product and at some point after that all these old XP computers will need to be upgraded or replaced.