Hasta La Gadget!

With exactly one year left before Microsoft cuts off all support for Windows XP, Microsoft is urging businesses who are still running the decade-old operating system to upgrade to either Windows 7 or Windows 8. It has also cut off support to Office 2003 today. It has cited a lot of reasons that businesses should upgrade their software, including security risks and lack of technical support if things go awry. It has even offered some nice incentives to upgrading.

Businesses with Windows XP and Office 2003 on their systems will no longer receive security updates, so they’re more prone to viruses, malware, and trojans. Software and hardware companies will stop making their products compatible with Windows XP after support ends, and there will be no tech support to call if you need help with your systems. Luckily, Microsoft has offered some decent discounts for upgrading to Windows 8.

There are a list of partners offering Open License discounts for Windows 8 and Office 2013. Businesses will have to purchase the two as a set however. They will also have to be running Windows XP Professional on their systems prior to upgrading to Windows 8. When purchasing both Windows 8 and Office 2013 together, businesses will get 15% off of their total cost, amounting to $477 per combo license. If businesses only want one product or the other, they can get Windows 8 for $188 and Office 2013 for $373. They’re limited to 100 licenses for each software.

According to ComputerWorld, last month, 39% of all PCs, and 42% of all Windows PCs, ran Windows XP last month. Analysts also believe that 1/3rd of all PCs will continue to run XP even after support ends. Chances are, if most of these businesses are still running Windows XP on their systems, they’re going to need more than just a license to upgrade. These businesses will most likely have to upgrade all of their computers, which is a costly effort and most likely the reason why they haven’t gone through with the change.

[via Microsoft]

Microsoft urges businesses to upgrade from Windows XP is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Ever since officially releasing on Windows 7 back in February, Internet Explorer 10 has been slowly chipping away at previous versions of Microsoft’s web browser. Internet Explorer 10 gained 1.35 percentage points in March, thanks to the release of the browser on Windows 7 in late February. IE10 is now at 2.93% market share out of all web browsers, with IE collectively bringing in almost 56% of the market share.

As for Internet Explorer 9 and previous version like IE8 and IE7, all three took a slight hit, according to statistics from Net Applications. IE9 dropped 1.05 percentage points, falling to 20.62% and IE8 lost 0.15%, standing at 23.23% — it’s currently the world’s most popular browser, however. IE7 took a hit of 0.08% to 1.93%, and IE6 fell 0.12% to 6.21%. Yes, more people are using IE6 than IE10 and IE7 combined.

As for Internet Explorer’s competition, both Firefox and Chrome gained a bit of market share during the past quarter. Firefox grew to 20.21%, while Chrome is now at 16.45%. Chrome took some hits throughout the past several months, but it’s slowly starting to recover. It may not pass Firefox this year, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the question.

As for other browsers, Safari is sitting at 5.31%, while Opera owns 1.74% of the browser market share. It’s not expected for these two browsers to make much ground any time soon, as IE, Firefox, and Chrome are currently way out in front, with IE owning a tremendous lead over Firefox and Chrome, which probably won’t go away for the foreseeable future.

[via The Next Web]

Internet Explorer 10 gaining ground after releasing on Windows 7 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Did you hear the latest from Microsoft? The software giant has started to roll out Windows 7 Service Pack 1 as an automatic update, never mind that Service Pack 1 was originally released a couple of years ago. Good thing that the Microsoft folks have decided to make this an automatic update instead of requiring users to install it manually using Windows Update, as you can never quite tell when a momentary lapse in concentration or a short memory could result in not installing the Service Pack 1, which could result in a system be compromised down the road.

Microsoft said as of today, “the installation will be fully automatic with no user action required for those who already have Automatic Update enabled. SP1 will be released gradually over the coming weeks to all customers on the RTM version of Windows 7.” Basically, that is what we love computers to move towards to – smarter software that requires less maintenance on the part of the consumer, without compromising on safety and security. Are you still using Windows 7 as your operating system of choice at this point in time, or have you already moved to the beauty that is Windows 8?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: 600 Students To Receive MacBook Air At Illinois High School, Twitter Receives Own Patent,

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