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Microsoft ends support of XP

In this day and age, I like to think that a good portion of the population already know that Internet Explorer has been a pack follower, not a leader in supporting modern web browser standards. Microsoft recently announced that as of today, April 8, 2014, they are no longer supporting the Windows XP operating system, which is 12 years old, and rightly so. Did you know that hackers find vulnerabilities for XP on a monthly basis, and that Microsoft in turn has to release patches every month for the last 12 years to keep up? Well now, they are not going to fix them anymore.  As one professor of Computer Science (Dr. Anil Somayaji) put it, "It's basically like painting a bullseye on yourself when you're running Windows XP". Although Microsoft's decision might upset many users with older machines, it's ultimately the right choice because it keeps your data safer from hackers. Also, it's ancient, so come on Canadian government and banks.

What's the solution? Well, the simplest one is to get a modern operating system, at least Windows 7. If you want to move away from Windows but want to keep your older PC, try Linux's Elementary OS (called 'Luna') which is free and runs really quickly on older hardware (I'm running it on my tiny Asus Eee PC). However, if you're in the market for a new machine I firmly recommend getting an Apple Mac. You can natively run Windows on it (if you must) or better yet take advantage of the Mac OS which is built on UNIX.