It is a big week for Microsoft. Just yesterday it announced the first major update for Windows 8.1. It also unveiled Windows Phone 8.1 which comes with a plethora of new features, including the much rumored digital personal assistant Cortana. Later this week the company will pull the plug on one of its most popular operating system, Windows XP. There are still a lot of users who continue to use the OS, and they won’t receive any software software after April 8th. To ensure that it does, the UK government has paid Microsoft nearly £5.5 million to keep the updates coming for another year.
As part of this deal, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Windows XP, as well as Office 2003 and Exchange 2003 to the UK government for another year. Apparently there was a lot of demand from central government departments across the pond to retain the OS.
UK’s NHS, the health service, has more than 800,000 PCs with almost 85 percent of them running on Windows XP. Its certainly pleased that they will continue to get support. Despite Microsoft’s willingness to enter into this deal, the company still believes that users should switch up from Windows XP as soon as possible. Microsoft is even offering individual customers $100 discounts should they choose to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 8.1, though recent statistics believe those migrating from the old OS seem to prefer Windows 7 more.
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