How Will Microsoft Windows XP End-Of-Life Impact Your Daily Work as a Translator?
As you probably have heard, starting next April, Microsoft will stop providing new security updates, non-security hotfixes or any kind of support for Windows XP.
Already many software vendors have dropped support for Microsoft Windows XP. It is also likely that providers of antivirus software will not continue supporting Microsoft Windows XP, which will open the door for exploits specific to Windows XP. Staying on Microsoft Windows XP will become risky.
Although Microsoft Windows XP is currently the OS for only a small minority of memoQ users (around 6%), supporting this platform is costly for Kilgray – Microsoft no longer releases the newest .NET Framework (4.5) for Windows XP. Using the latest .NET Framework offers us better and more efficient ways to develop software, and to deliver to you more functionality and stability in memoQ.
As a result, we are considering dropping support for Microsoft Windows XP as well, sometime in 2014.
We don’t want to leave you stranded, so we would like to know what your plans are regarding upgrading from Windows XP.
Why is Kilgray planning to drop support for Microsoft Windows XP?
Managing security issues. Already, only a small fraction of our users are still on Windows XP. The number is dropping from month to month. Still, we maintain Windows XP systems to test compatibility. Because of security issues that will increase after Microsoft drops support of XP, in order not to compromise our IT infrastructure, we will have to keep the Windows XP system separated, which adds even more burden on our testers. Some bugs cannot be fixed, because they are in Windows XP as an operating system and not in memoQ. Newer operating systems, like Windows 7 or Windows 8, offer a more stable environment.
Reducing the number of testing scenarios. One fewer operating system will free up testing resources. This helps improve the product quality even further, and means that we can issue hotfixes more quickly.
Keeping our support responsive. Sometimes support needs the same operating system as the user to reproduce an issue. If something needs to be changed in the code, the developer might also need this operating system. From next year on, this will mean additional effort due to security considerations as described above. It can happen that this additional effort will delay our response time.
Unleashing the power of up-to-date development technology. The need to support Microsoft Windows XP affects our development in various ways. Without going into details, we can be more productive and add some great new features if we don’t have to worry about compatibility with Microsoft Windows XP when working on new features.
We will have to stop supporting Microsoft Windows XP sooner or later anyway, so we are sending this message to make sure that you know about this in advance.
The open question is whether we can discontinue support of Microsoft Windows XP with the next major release of memoQ, or not.
If you are a memoQ user using Windows XP, please complete the following survey and tell us what you think: Can you move to a new operating system by April 2014?
Click here to complete the survey
We would be pleased if we could move away from Windows XP sooner rather than later. Please raise any concerns you might have now. We are open to a discussion.
Your help and feedback is greatly appreciated.
Should you have any questions, contact us at support@kilgray.com. We are happy to help.
Kind regards,
Your Kilgray team