Microsoft issues "2 year warning" on XP and Office 2003

[The Pontificator]

MS will cease support on XP SP3 and MS Office 2003 in April of 2014.

Does this mean that the formats from Office 2003

.ppt
.doc
.xls

Will no longer be supported starting in 2 years? I thought that Microsoft's productivity software had "backwards" capability.

[Oblique Human]

No, they will just discontinue the product support. Any new versions in the foreseeable future will support the older formats as did Office 2007.

[The Pontificator]

No, they will just discontinue the product support. Any new versions in the foreseeable future will support the older formats as did Office 2007.

That's what I thought.

[morganjg]

They will put out the standard warning that there will be no future patches to fix bugs or virus issues, and no new service packs to aid in better utilizing faster processing/newer technologies. I'm sure they will also warn about malfunction and attempt users to upgrade. The products will still work, but seeing as major corporations are still hesitant to purchase long term Windows 7 contracts and that is their major revenue, they needed to do something to push them over the edge a bit.

[The Pontificator]

The only machines that I know of that still have XP on them are the used IBM Thinkpad T60's that you can still purchase from Newegg, Wal-Mart, and other retailers for about $240.

[jlanger]

No, they will just discontinue the product support. Any new versions in the foreseeable future will support the older formats as did Office 2007.

Actually access 2000 does not play nicely with 2007 as my county agency is finding out in our move to windows 7 which also does not play nicely with office 2000 products:(

[morganjg]

The only machines that I know of that still have XP on them are the used IBM Thinkpad T60's that you can still purchase from Newegg, Wal-Mart, and other retailers for about $240.

Keep in mind that when Windows 7 released Microsoft gave companies the option of using the Windows 7 key and downgrading to Windows XP, so they have a ton of copies out there. I don't think the concern is new computers out of the box but rather existing licensees that are using the products included. I use windows XP Pro SP3 on my Dell Latitude for business and have been alerted several times about this issue.

[Oblique Human]

Actually access 2000 does not play nicely with 2007 as my county agency is finding out in our move to windows 7 which also does not play nicely with office 2000 products:(

Maybe I was a bit hasty with my original comment. I have heard of people having problems with certain formats although haven't experienced the same myself, I own machines running XP and Win7 and so far, the files created on one system will open and edit fine on the other. I have been looking at those freeware MSOffice alternatives, chiefly Open Office, and it looks very promising. But one major problem with the other Office suites is that on intricate MSOffice created documents, they lose some formatting during import which keeps me from converting to them full time.

[auk1124]

The only machines that I know of that still have XP on them are the used IBM Thinkpad T60's that you can still purchase from Newegg, Wal-Mart, and other retailers for about $240.

There are state government agencies out there that are still running XP big time. This is gonna cause a major hit to some government IT budgets in a few years.

[Edcculus]

Wow, I kind of thought they stopped support for XP a few years ago. My Thinkpad T60, which I bought in 2004 and is still going strong runs XP. I personally think XP was one of the most stable windows releases to date.

[The Pontificator]

There are state government agencies out there that are still running XP big time. This is gonna cause a major hit to some government IT budgets in a few years.

I think MS is offering some sort of free upgrade for enterprise or institutional users (holdouts) of XP.

[closer]

The financial industry in NYC employs Excel extensively, and several of the banks have departments that are on Office 2002/2003 on XP. While MS will continue to support SP3 for another couple of years, the support costs are going up, prompting the banks to upgrade to 2007, because their internal IT departments have not certified 2010 yet.

[KeithS]

I have to get rid of ALL of the technology in my life. I'm sick of the crap.

[maha0098]

Boo urns :(

[njpaddy]

I'm still running XP, along with the full version of Office '97. I hate using my wife's pc with Win 7.