Microsoft to Yank XP in 2 Years

Microsoft has kicked off what it calls a "two-year countdown" to the death of Windows XP and the Office 2003 productivity suite.
Separately, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista, the problem-plagued operating system that never really took hold among customers, exited mainstream support on April 10. In a product's extended support phase, Microsoft provides security patches to registered users but offers other fixes, including reliability and stability updates, only to organizations that have support contracts with the company.
Windows XP and Office 2003 will no longer be supported as of April 8, 2014, a company spokeswoman said in a recent blog post. On that date, Microsoft will stop shipping security updates for both products.
At that point, XP will have become Microsoft's longest-lived operating system. The company will have maintained the software for 12 years and five months -- or about two and a half years longer than it usually supports an OS. It supported the previous record-holder, Windows NT, for 11 years and five months.
Both XP and Office 2003 have been hugely successful. XP went on sale in October 2001, and Office 2003 launched in October 2003. "Windows XP and Office 2003 were great software releases, but the technology environment has shifted," said Stella Chernyak, a Microsoft marketing director.
Some customers will

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Finally! Windows XP no longer most popular desktop system

Windows 7 is now the world's most popular desktop operating system, according to the August report from Net Applications.

In August, Windows 7 had a 42.76% market share, a fraction of a point more than Windows XP's 42.52%. Windows XP was released in 2001.

The much-maligned Windows Vista sits at third place with a 6.15% market share, followed by Mac OS X 10.7 and Mac OS X 10.6 with 2.45% and 2.38%, respectively.

All in all, older versions included, Microsoft controls some 92% of the market.

It took three years for Windows 7 to become the world's most popular OS. Microsoft's desktop operating system, which was launched in October 2009, will soon be replaced by a newer version — Windows 8.

Windows 8, which is scheduled to go on sale on October 26, will be Microsoft's first operating system designed to work just as well on tablets as it does on desktop computers.

Users running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Professional for $39.99 via an online download.

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Built-In Germanium Lasers Could Make Computer Chips Faster

Institute (PSI) researchers have investigated how they could make the semiconductor germanium emit laser light. As a laser material, germanium together with Silicon could form the basis for innovative computer chips in which information would be transferred partially in the form of light. This technology would revolutionise data streaming within chips and give a boost to the performance of electronics. The researchers have demonstrated that germanium must be put under strain by an external force in order to turn it into a laser material.

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The decisive investigations were carried out by the scientists at

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Intel Exec: Industry Needs to Step up and Save the PC

If the PC industry can't come up with a better way to make the PC a part of our Internet-crazed lives, then it will continue down its current path to becoming a has-been in the high-tech world.

If the PC industry can't come up with a better way to make the PC a part of our Internet-crazed lives, then it will continue down its current path to becoming a has-been in the high-tech world.
That's the message from Intel's chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, who will present a keynote address at the annual Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco today.
"I think that it's basically incumbent on Intel and the PC industry in general to deliver a competitive platform capability," Rattner told Computerworld on Wednesday. "If you can't deliver a comparable or better experience on a PC, the PC isn't going to win."
The PC market has struggled through several years of

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