Bad news for users of Windows Vista and Office 2007

By coincidence of circumstances, April is the saddest month for those who have not yet decided to move to the latest version of Windows and Office products from Microsoft. In particular, the period ended April 10 standard support for Windows Vista operating system and office suite, Office 2007. Next comes the sad April 2014, when the end of the extended support period, Windows XP and Office 2003.

As many of our readers already know, Microsoft divides the life cycle of its products into two main stages - the main (Mainstream) and extended «Extended». This ended in April, the main stage of the support and maintenance of Vista and Office 2007 Office, which means the termination of free product support. Of course, critical updates will be released for another five years, but the improvements at the request of free customers will no longer be.

It is worth noting that despite the current maturity came with the advent of the second service pack, Vista platform and has not received wide recognition from corporate customers. Thus, according to the company Net Applications, Windows XP is still the leader in the number of cars using it - 47% of the total world fleet PC, and the second was Windows 7 with a share of 38%, but now Vista is far behind with share of 8%.

With regard to the obsolete, but in no way lost its relevance for Office 2003, it extended support to end April 8, 2014. After that date, users will not receive any more updates, but can still appeal to our partners Microsoft, to get help for products that entered the list of "unsupported".

We should also note that the organization, consistent with the protracted transition to new versions of Windows and Office with the now familiar Windows XP and Office 2003, may soon be in a serious loss. Many of these organizations in order to save still planned to go to the Windows operating system 8 and the next version of Office (which is still held under the code number "15"). Nevertheless, a number of experts and Microsoft executives themselves are convinced that in this case does not make any sudden movements. Instead, the agency analysts Gartner, for example, are advised to first focus on the upgrading of all jobs to Windows 7. Either way, the complete transition to the latest version of Windows / Office of organizations take at least 1-2 years.

Returning to the fate of the "old" products should be recalled that Microsoft offers an optional "personal support" to organizations that for various reasons, need more time to migrate. At the same time, to get such support, the organization must have a valid support contract at the rate of «Premier Support», that the costs are very expensive.

More information about the terms and rules of maintenance of Microsoft products can be found in a special section of questions and answers on the official site at support.microsoft.com / gp / lifepolicy.