Microsoft seems to be in the habit of wanting to kill off their old products these days. Last month the Redmond giants started a countdown page for Internet Explorer 6 – showing the percentage of IE6 usage all around the world and letting the world know about their mission of reducing those numbers to zero.
Now, Microsoft has just launched a new countdown – this time in the form of a gadget, it counts down the number of days left before they finally end their support for Windows XP. As of today, the aging operating system has 1081 days left – 2014 will be the year they stop supporting it.
Microsoft has previously tried to end support for Vista back in 2009, but with Vista doing poorly and not really offering any major improvements over the operating system, they were pretty much forced to keep it alive. However, when Windows 7 was a success and widely adopted worldwide, they’ve suddenly turned on the offense, and have been trying to push XP out of the picture.
Windows 7 has an XP-compatibility mode to support XP-only programs, newer versions of Internet Explorer won’t work on XP and IE10 won’t work on Vista – they basically want everyone to upgrade to the latest version of the operating system. And now with the countdown gadget, they’re giving XP users a constant reminder that support is coming to an end. One thing interesting to know though, since the countdown is a gadget, it will only run on Windows Vista or Windows 7 – and XP users won’t be able to know how long they have left until they upgrade. Carelessness on Microsoft’s part? Or was it intentional? You decide. Download the Windows XP End of Support Countdown Gadget.
Filed in . Read more about Gadget, Microsoft, Support, Windows and Windows Xp.