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Windows XP, Microsoft Corp.’s beloved seventh major operating system and arguably the company’s most successful, was left to perish on Tuesday at its creators’ hands. It was 12 years, seven months old. ~snip~ Windows XP’s funeral, a private ceremony held deep within Microsoft, was quiet. In lieu of flowers, Microsoft urged customers to donate to Windows 8, one of Windows XP’s grandchildren.

Summary: Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Word and Publisher are patched, some products for the last time. Today Microsoft released four security updates for Windows and Microsoft Office. These will be the last publicly-released updates for Windows XP and Office 2003. A total of 11 vulnerabilities were addressed by these updates, including seven for Windows XP and four for Office 2003. Separately, Microsoft released fixes for Internet Explorer 10 and 11 to address vulnerabilities fixed by Adobe in the Flash Player bundled in the Metro versions of IE. Among the vulnerabilities patched is a critical error in the handling of RTF...

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...

Revamped Outlook, collaboration functions highlight new features, beta testers report. NEW YORK -- With Office System 2003 now officially open for business, users are weighing in with opinions on the updated suite.Outlook's overhaul impressed them the most, although several had mixed opinions on the new look. But the much-touted collaboration functions and new XML capabilities have already proved useful, several beta testers report.Product BlitzBill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, launched the new suite of productivity applications at an event here Tuesday."Today we're introducing more software products on a single day than on any other day in our history,"...