For everyone who's living under a rock and still uses Windows XP, please consider the following:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/xpocalypse-now-windows-xp-support-has-ended/
Just tossing it out there, if your Windows XP box is still kicking and in active use, but you don't wish to drop a hundred bucks or more to upgrade it to Windows 7/8.1 (considering entirely new computers aren't that much more expensive these days anyhow,) or possibly the machine doesn't have enough 'oomph' to run Win7, do consider switching to an alternative OS like Ubuntu / Linux instead of saying on XP:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
The latest long term support release of Ubuntu just came out this month, and as a long time Linux user, I have to say this release is as user friendly / non-geeky as they come.
The only exception will be for MT4/5 users or users of Windows specific trading platforms. There are work arounds, and you can run MT4 on Linux through Wine, but it's not a user friendly process and might be intimidating for non-techie users.
(Note, I'll drop a thread on how to do MT4 on Linux later.. and other platforms based on Java or HTML5 run just fine on Linux or at worst only need minor tweaks to get going. Examples include: Thinkorswim, IB's TWS, Oanda's fxTrade, Any broker with cTrader Web (link is example), Any broker with Sirix Web (link is example), etc.. actually, I'll probably start another thread with details of all trading platforms that can run on Linux.)
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/xpocalypse-now-windows-xp-support-has-ended/
(read the rest through the link above..)It's finally here. After 12 years, 6 months, and 12 days on the market, Windows XP has hit its end of life. It will receive its last ever set of patches on Windows Update today (or "Woo" as Microsoft remarkably pronounces it internally), and for the most part, that will be that. Any flaws discovered from now on—and it's inevitable that some will be discovered—will never be publicly patched.
How bad is this going to be? It's probably going to be pretty bad. By some measures, about 28 percent of the Web-using public is still using Windows XP, and these systems are going to be ripe for exploitation.
While we can hope that personal firewalls and NAT systems will prevent any kind of Code Red or Nimda-style self-propagating worm from infecting these systems, exploitation through the likes of malicious e-mail attachments, Office documents, USB keys, and browsers is inevitable.
In fact, some lesser-publicized support changes are likely to exacerbate the situation. Office 2003, released October 21, 2003, is also having its support ended today. And although Internet Explorer 7 and 8 were both released after Windows XP—and will continue to be supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7—they too are no longer supported on Windows XP and will no longer get patches.
Just tossing it out there, if your Windows XP box is still kicking and in active use, but you don't wish to drop a hundred bucks or more to upgrade it to Windows 7/8.1 (considering entirely new computers aren't that much more expensive these days anyhow,) or possibly the machine doesn't have enough 'oomph' to run Win7, do consider switching to an alternative OS like Ubuntu / Linux instead of saying on XP:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
The latest long term support release of Ubuntu just came out this month, and as a long time Linux user, I have to say this release is as user friendly / non-geeky as they come.
The only exception will be for MT4/5 users or users of Windows specific trading platforms. There are work arounds, and you can run MT4 on Linux through Wine, but it's not a user friendly process and might be intimidating for non-techie users.
(Note, I'll drop a thread on how to do MT4 on Linux later.. and other platforms based on Java or HTML5 run just fine on Linux or at worst only need minor tweaks to get going. Examples include: Thinkorswim, IB's TWS, Oanda's fxTrade, Any broker with cTrader Web (link is example), Any broker with Sirix Web (link is example), etc.. actually, I'll probably start another thread with details of all trading platforms that can run on Linux.)