The posting on The Windows Blog offers some helpful suggestions and links and says the company has created an end-of-support solution center.

Is it Necessary?

Mike Cherry, Directions on Microsoft's vice president of research for operating systems, has a simple question: Is this really a big deal? His answer is that it's not.

"I have a pretty jaded view of mainstream and extended support because I'm not sure they actually offer anything," Cherry said. "When you go and read what they offer, it comes down, in mainstream support, to enabling you to bring an issue you encounter to Microsoft's attention. They will decide whether or not they are going to fix it. It is quite conceivable that even in mainstream support when you report it, Microsoft will say, 'Thank you very much, we are going to leave it as it is.'"

Cherry said the issue is a calculation by Microsoft that fixing something for an older operating system may make it more difficult for applications to work in the current OS, which is Windows 7.

"Because of those changes, it's less likely that Microsoft will fix any problems with the older version," he said. "Their reasoning is that to change the architecture will break too many applications that are relying on it."

Patches Bypassed Before

He said some people see the issue as merely theoretic, but he added that on at least two recent occasions Microsoft has declined to patch vulnerabilities in Windows 2000. Thus, Cherry reasoned, users of the older OSes may have a false sense of security about their coverage.

If Cherry's basic premise that users can't rely on Microsoft in all instances is accepted, it becomes even more important for users to keep abreast of the state of the operating systems in use. They are, in essence, on their own and unprotected long before the end of support arrives.

His advice, however, isn't to track how old the systems are chronologically, but in terms of the core changes that have been made to the underlying product. The basic calculation is whether the changes are enough to dissuade Microsoft from supporting the older version.

"What you need to be aware of isn't so much where a product is in its life cycle as much as how large a set of architectural changes have occurred between [your] version and the most current version," Cherry said.

Cherry drove the point home by expressly saying that support from Microsoft should not be considered a warranty, but merely guidelines.