[Anthony]

Hey guys, Anthony here. For my first post, I really want to stress that the deadline for Windows XP expired two years ago. As time goes on, issues with XP and POS Ready 2009 will only grow. One concern that some third Party software developers (e.g. Dropbox, Google, LogMeIn) have announced that they will no longer support users running on Windows XP or POS ready 2009.**

Dropbox sent notifications over the past few weeks to customers saying the Dropbox app on Windows XP will no longer be supported as of August 29th, 2016. Dropbox is a popular tool for saving your backups to both a local computer and the cloud. If you are on an XP system, you will soon no longer be able to save your backups to Dropbox. Even though you can still access Dropbox via a web browser, Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome will no longer be supported. This means secured, safe access cannot be guaranteed.

Another vendor, LogMeIn, has announced that its LogMeIn Rescue product (the means by which we provide our remote technical support) and the rest of their product line will end support for Windows XP based machines by May 30th, 2016. While LogmMeIn and Hamachi currently work, there is no guarantee they will work with XP and POS Ready ’09 users in the near future. Since LogMeIn Rescue support ended earlier this year, we have seen an increase in time it takes to access these systems. If you are not on a gold level plan, this means you will experience an increased cost of support. Plus, we will not be able to guarantee that we can provide remote access support for your older XP based systems.

**Windows Vista Users: there have also been notifications from software developers that they are no longer supporting Windows Vista as well.

My best recommendation for you is to consider your migration path now to Windows 7 or newer. You can find out if your system is compatible with being upgraded to newer versions of Windows by downloading the Microsoft upgrade assistant. Simply select the version of Windows you are looking to upgrade to:

Windows 7

Windows 8/ 8.1

Windows 10: Use the Windows 8/8.1 upgrade assistant to check

If your system is not compatible, you may want to consider purchasing new hardware.

Does this mean that nothing is going to work once these deadlines pass? Maybe not but at some point they will fail and I don’t want you or your business to be in a situation where you may not be able to get help.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more of Anthony Cares every Thursday!

[Anthony]

Hi all, So we get to revisit my very first Anthony Cares topic with the recent news that on June 19th 2017 we are going to end support for XP users.

So the questions we get are why? Why after 15 years of Windows XP being around are we going to end support on this beloved operating system? I understand the resistance to change but we have to move on at some point.

“My computers are fine, why change!”

If you like your computers then it is worth exploring the capability of your system to upgrade to Windows 10. Two versions you don't want to get on is Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows Vista is the next Operating system that Microsoft is going to end of life on April 11th 2017, And Microsoft is already backing away from Windows 7 which I wrote about here.

Using XP is not fine any longer. It is stuck using older and less secure security certificates which has lead to an inability to work with some credit card solutions. XP lacks access to a modern web browser which can lead to vulnerabilities in using the web, being that Firefox is ending its support of XP this year as well.

“But I am using Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 and it is supported by Microsoft until 4-9-2019!”

POS Ready 2009 is based off of Windows XP SP3. This product is technically still supported by Microsoft with security patches, but not by all 3rd party software developers. Which means there are security concerns about the apps running on these systems.

Being based off of Windows XP, the tools that we use to support you are not working properly, and quite frankly is the biggest reason why we are making this choice. My nightmare scenario is to have one of you have an issue with the system and our tech support staff not be able to help you. That is something that each and every time we log into a Windows XP system we dread because one day the tools we use are just not going to work.

“Anthony you are normally the cheery tech guy, but all this doom and gloom makes you sound like Isaac…”

I know, I know. so here are some "fun facts” about why you should move off of XP:

XP is over 15 years old. I don’t know about you but when I was a 15 year old teenager I was weird and awkward, just like XP is nowadays.

When XP was announced....

• -Facebook wouldn't be invented for another 3 years.
  -The number 1 song in the country was Fallin’ by Alicia Keys.
  -America On Line (AOL) was still the primary connection to the internet here in the U.S.
  -I was a champion at snake on my Nokia 5190 cell phone with MCI/WorldCom as my provider.
  -American Pie 2 was the number 1 movie in America.
  -Wikipedia was only a couple of MONTHS old.
  -The original Apple iPod had not come out yet.
  -Microsoft was still under threat of being broken up as a Monopoly by the US Justice department.
  -You could still buy a new Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn and Daewoo Automobiles!
  -RetailEdge was 12 years old, we were on version 7.5 (we're on 8.2 now!) and you had to talk to some guy named Rudi about fishing or skiing... or... for tech support.