From InfoWorld: Windows 8, Microsoft's 2012 flop, will be retired from all support today, putting the 48 million users who still run the three-year-old operating system in a spot: Upgrade or risk getting hacked.
After today, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for Windows 8 -- or for IE10 and IE11, the company browsers that run on the OS -- and the company will not offer technical support for the operating system.
To continue to receive security updates, Windows 8 users must upgrade to Windows 8.1, the free 2013 edition available from the Windows Store, Microsoft's app warehouse.
Today's support deadline has been in place since the debut of Windows 8.1 more than two years ago, and at the time was characterized by Microsoft as analogous to the 24-month grace period previously given to customers for migrating from a core OS to that operating system's first "service pack."
Although the service pack concept is now dead -- mugged by Windows 8 and murdered by Windows 10 -- Microsoft described the Windows 8-to-Windows 8.1 upgrade requirement in service pack terms when it launched the latter in October 2013.
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