Saying Goodbye to Windows XP

In two years time, Microsoft will end all support for Windows XP, one of the world's most popular computer operating systems ever.

When April 8, 2014, comes upon us, the software giant will stop issuing fixes, security patches, or any other form of support for the OS and its millions of users.

Microsoft said it will stop all support for one of the world's most popular operating systems ever.

This is no big deal. Things like this happen all the time, in almost all industries. Automobiles, watches, even cosmetics, they all go out of fashion and become obsolete, or unimportant enough to merit a trip to history's dustbin.

Obsolescence, however, happens faster and more often in the high-tech world.

Consumers find nothing wrong, in fact, with replacing their smartphones as often as their favorite manufacturers would want. There are enough millions of Apple faithful, for example, who are willing to fall in line in front of their favorite Apple stores in order to be one among the first to get their hands on the latest iPhone, iPod, or iPad.

This ritual happens almost every year, on the dot.

Other manufacturers of smartphones and other high-tech gadgets resort to similar schemes.

In a way, this makes Windows XP something of a rarity. The software's immense popularity (It accounted for 76.1 percent of the OS market at the height of its fame, and despite Microsoft's several warnings of ending support for the OS, it still had a 28.9 percent share of the market in March 2012.) left the company with no choice but support it two years longer than it previously said it would.

But all good things come to an end.

I may have to rethink my decade-long love affair with Windows XP. While Windows XP systems will still be running as they have for the past 12 years, end of support means I might have to upgrade to a computer running Microsoft's latest computer operating system, such as the Windows 7, or jump directly to Windows 8 this October.

Of course, I could stick with my Windows XP computer and brave the potential security risks and deal with the highly likely refusal of independent software vendors and hardware manufacturers to support my "obsolete" system.

There are times when I wonder why gadgets and tools, which still seem perfectly capable of doing the job, have to be disposed of just because something new and flashier has arrived.