A tech-savvy person would surely know about the Operating Systems (OS) built by the computer giant, Microsoft. Every computer that runs Windows operating system will have one of the OS flavors such as XP, Vista, Win 7 or Win 8. Windows XP is considered to be the most widely used operating system, because of its user-friendly features, and third-party software compatibility; however Microsoft plans to end the support for this 12 years old OS on April 8th, 2014. Microsoft is aware that most of its users have upgraded to the newer version of OS like Windows 7 and Windows 8, but this upgrade needs to spread across all the friends and family of the users to get continued support from Microsoft.
The latest version of Windows Operating System is Windows 8.1 and Microsoft strongly recommends its users to upgrade to this version at the earliest. The users using any other Windows OS can execute the Windows Upgrade Assistant on the computers to check if their machine is compatible for the upgrade. Before upgrading the OS to the latest version, users must backup all the necessary files and folders on the machine to avoid any loss of data, as upgrading the OS formats the hard drive, considering it as a clean boot. Once the upgrade is complete, all the previous files and settings will be lost.
As stated by Microsoft (2014) “The easiest path to Windows 8.1 is with new devices”. Windows 7 has been in the market since many years now, and Microsoft supports this version; however the company does not encourage its users to upgrade to Win 7, unless the computer cannot be upgraded to Win 8.1. Considering the existence of XP since many years, the users are now familiar and habituated to the functions of XP, and most of them do not want to upgrade, or do not know what to do. Microsoft has been supportive and lenient to its XP users so far, but with the end of support for XP, I believe it’s the right time to upgrade the computers to the latest offerings by the company.
Works Cited
MCT Information Services, Microsoft hoping users will get friends, family to leave Windows
XP. phys.org. Retrieved from http://phys.org/news/2014-02-microsoft-users-friends-family-windows.html. Web. (2014).
