Microsoft announced that Windows XP will not be supported any more until April 8, 2014.
There are certain terms of Microsoft support lifecycle.
Mainstream support: Microsoft will offer mainstream support for a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability, or for 2 years after the successor product is released, whichever is longer. For example, if you buy a new version of Windows and five years later another version is released, you will still have two years of support left for the previous version.
Extended support: Microsoft will offer extended support for either a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability, or for 2 years after the second successor product (two versions later) is released, whichever is longer.
Regarding Windows XP
- Mainstream support ended on April 14, 2009
- Extended support will be ended on April 8, 2014
So, I remove the Windows XP installation from my Acer Aspire One netbook. It is so old. I only changed the SSD from the original poor performance 8GB SSD by a new 32GB SSD.
Then, I installed the CentOS 6.4 on it. It works very smoothly.