Halloween is not a big deal down under. Certainly when I was a kid, nobody celebrated halloween, but these days it is starting to pop up more and more. What does Halloween have to do with security you ask? Well it seemed quite apt that on Halloween night I saw this article from computerworld on how 48% of surveyed companies plan to run XP post Microsoft end-of-support in 2014.

Now if that isn't scary I don't know what is! While I can understand the pain in the need to to test applictions, run a pilot group, train users in a new interface and finally roll out a new desktop OS, I suspect it pales in comparison to getting your desktop fleet pwned by the first never-to-be-patched-in-your-OS vulnerability on April 9th 2014.

Don't get me wrong. I liked XP. It did what was needed and was a solid OS. It was rock solid enough to make it's successor, Vista, look like crap. I still have it running on one machine at home. But Windows 7 is no Vista. IMO it's worth the switch. Anyway by 2014 I doubt I'll even still be using Windows 7, (with plans for Windows 8 in 2012) let alone a 13 year old OS!

I don't care how much you 'like it', continuing to use WinXP post april 2014 for your desktops is just asking for trouble. Think about it.... a 13 year old OS. That's akin to using Windows 95 in 2008. Or continuing to use Windows 98 until next year.

Now that's scary!