Stop Using Windows XP and Office 2003 on or Before April 8, 2014

Microsoft will no longer be supporting Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) and Office 2003 (SP3) as of April 8, 2014. After this date, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, support or online technical content updates from Microsoft for these products. Your computer will still operate, but if you continue to use Windows XP or Office 2003, you will become more vulnerable to security risks and malware infections. Undoubtedly, cyber criminals will target computers that are still using these programs.

For this reason, you should immediately start planning to migrate to more current versions of Windows and Office on all law firm and home computers running Windows XP or Office 2003. Note that most current versions of these products are Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 SP3. If you are using SP2 or earlier versions of these products, you already have greater security vulnerabilities; as a short-term fix, you should update to SP3 if you don’t already have plans to move off Windows XP or Office 2003.

Here is Microsoft’s page explaining the reasons for ending XP support and what users can do to migrate to a newer system.