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Microsoft is quite keen on getting back in the game and proving everybody that it is still a tech giant that doesn’t sleep anymore, but also is here to run the world one more time. Do you remember the wave of almost daily news coming from Microsoft earlier this month? The reveal of the Microsoft Office suite adapted to iOS and soon Android, all sorts of free Windows licenses for small devices, the Windows Phone and its apps, the promise of the return of the Jedi (just kidding, it was about the return of the Start functions before the future Windows 9 and the reveal of Cortana, Microsoft’s own challenger for Siri), they all promised a new future for Microsoft and Microsoft users, all managed by the busy hands of the company’s CEO.
And then, something went slightly wrong: users won’t get any Windows XP updates, a piece of news that threw the world on the brinks of desperation, as as we all know, the most likely ones to be affected by this halt in Windows XP updates are and will be the small and big business alike, the ones who work in providing infrastructure services for the population (electricity, water and gas companies for instance) and the few users who are still using the XP for one reason or another.
But in its race to prove itself, Microsoft also launched an upsetting information some days back, stating that
next month’s security updates (on May 13th, the next ‘Patch Tuesday’) will be dependent on Windows 8.1 Update.
Basically they say that if you don’t install the Windows 8.1 Update 1, after the date of May 13th, you won’t get any security updates anymore. Does it feel like your hand is being forced here? Are you troubled by the consequences of not installing Windows 8.1 Update 1? Since the news were released, experts consider this a bad move from Microsoft’s part and one that will have terrible effects not on mainstream users per se, as they can install Update 1, but for the same ones affected by the Windows XP abandoning: businesses, infrastructure companies and all sorts of industry managers who will face the possibility of their systems being hacked and important data getting stolen or misused by cyber criminals. Add this to the mass hysteria that has been going on this month once the Heartbleed bug has been discovered and the two cyber attacks being performed swiftly, and you have a clear picture on why it is a bad moment and a bad decision from Microsoft to not give users enough time to update.
While May 13th is not far away, let’s keep our eyes and ears open to the consequences of not installing Windows 8.1 Update 1 in the immediate future.
