Why is Microsoft ending support for Windows XP and Office 2003?

In 2002 Microsoft introduced its Support Lifecycle policy based on customer feedback to have more transparency and predictability of support for Microsoft products. As part of this policy, Microsoft products, including Windows and Office products, receive a minimum of 10 years of support (5 years Mainstream Support and 5 years Extended Support), at the supported service pack level.

Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will go out of support on April 8, 2014. If your organisation has not started the migration to a modern desktop, you are late. On average customer deployment can take 18 to 32 months. To ensure you remain on supported versions of Windows and Office, you should begin your planning and application testing immediately to ensure you deploy before end of support.

What does end of support mean to customers?

It means you should take action. After April 8, 2014, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates.

Running Windows XP and Office 2003 in your environment after their end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as:

• Security & Compliance Risks: Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to security risks. This may result in an officially recognized control failure by an internal or external audit body, leading to suspension of certifications, and/or public notification of the organization’s inability to maintain its systems and customer information.

• Lack of Software & Hardware Manufacturers support: A recent industry report suggests many software vendors are unlikely to support new versions of applications on Windows XP. And it may stifle access to hardware innovation: Research further notes that in 2012, most PC hardware manufacturers will stop supporting Windows XP on the majority of their new PC models.

Get current with Windows and Office. This option has upside well beyond keeping you supported. It offers more flexibility to empower employees to be more productive, while increasing operational efficiency through improved PC security and management. It also enables your organization to take advantage of latest technology trends such as virtualization and the cloud.

How do I begin my migration?

NKC Group has a dedicated migration team awaiting your call.  We have years of experience to make sure your business faces the minimum amount of disruption during the migration. Call us today on 01260 217 917

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Carl

You want a company that is close enough to respond quickly but large enough to have the skills to fix your problems when they do turn up?

Well you are in the right place we are a national IT Support company with local IT support knowledge.

So whether you’re in Aberdeen or Anglesey, Yarmouth or York, We will have a local IT support specialist in your area.

We have a service center in Cheshire were our Microsoft certified engineers fix 86% of all calls without a engineer being dispatched to site and if we do need an engineer we can generally have someone on site in 4 hours.

All of our local IT support specialists are trained to the highest standard and have a minimum of 5 years industry experience.

Our local IT support specialists must complete 6 months in our service center, under the watchful eye of our Technical Manger Carl Enser to make sure they are up to our high standards.

So if you want that national reach with the local response call us today on 01260 217 917

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Carl

IT support is important whatever the size of your business. Small companies often cannot justify employing an IT expert and this often causes huge problems when they experience IT problems, need updates or just require advice on the best way forward to improve the efficiency of their operation.

This is where the benefits of an IT Support contract start to make a real difference. An IT support contract provides a company with time and resources to solve problems before they start, provides essential support to update and maintain equipment, and provides valuable money saving solutions.

Having an IT Support contract means that you have the peace of mind that you have a team of skilled engineers ready to respond when you encounter a problem. Having someone who knows your network, what hardware you have and how it is used will allow for a much faster fault resolution. Being in a situation where you need to call in an unknown company to resolve your problems is often a recipe for disaster.

Let’s look at 2 scenarios: With and Without a support contract.

First, with:

• The client gets support and maintenance when they need it, within defined timescales

• Proactive Support

• The client doesn’t need to worry when or whether something will be done

• The IT Support provider can plan and manage work sent by its clients realistically

• Both parties operate transparently

• Satisfaction is improved; Results are better

• Set monthly fees

And without:

• The support company may not be able to schedule the work for some time

• Bills are unpredictable

• The support is reactive not proactive

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Carl

All our team are highly skilled individuals from but most importantly our team is full of passion for technology. We get excited by technology, in fact the most requested day off in NKC groups history was the day Windows 8 was release as all our super geeks wanted to stay at home and play. This is why our team are great at IT support.

2. We are Multi lingual – We speak not only English but we also speak geek. (Our Cloud Computing Guru, Carl Enser claims to also speak ‘Proper Manc’ being a Manchester lad)

Our team have an excellent understanding of all things techie and have an amazing way of communicating the most technical things in plain old English.

Now how many IT support companies can do that?

3. Location, Location, Location – We believe we are ideally placed to provide the best support to our Manchester and Cheshire based customers.

We run our helpdesk from our head office just off the M6 near Congleton; from here our engineer can be onsite in Manchester and Chester within the hour.

As you would expect we also have guys in the field who are constantly in and around the Manchester and Chester area and can often be on-site within 30 minutes.

Our current record is being onsite in 3 minutes as we were installing a new pc on the ground floor of a Manchester business centre and received a call from our client on the first floor with a print problem. We would have been there sooner but the lift was slow.

Where is your IT Support Company based?

4. We are faster than Usain Bolt – Ok maybe not faster than Usain but we are pretty quick, we pride ourselves on our response times. If you have a system problem we guarantee to have a qualified engineer on the phone to you within 10 minutes.

How long do you wait for IT Support?

5. Fixed Price IT – This is our favourite talking point all our support contracts and fixed price, so no matter what goes wrong you’re covered for a low monthly fee, if fact we can support you for less than a £1 a day.

6. Cloud Specialists – When it comes to the Cloud what we don’t know isn’t worth knowing. We have successfully moved hundreds of people to the Cloud, whether you’re a Chester based firm of solicitors, a Macclesfield estate agents or a Manchester recruitment company we have moved companies of all shapes and sizes to the Cloud to improve IT performance and reduce costs.

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Carl

Office 365 will let you:

• Get the latest features from Microsoft® Exchange Online, including 25GB mailboxes and always up-to-date antivirus and anti-spam solutions.
  • Share documents and insights with colleagues, partners and customers to help teams to stay in sync.
  • Move easily from instant messaging into ad-hoc online meetings that include audio, video and screen sharing with just a few mouse clicks.
  • Get Microsoft® Office Professional Plus.

And from only £2.82 per user can you afford to wait?

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Carl

http://uk.movember.com/team/444749

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Chris

Oh yeah, don’t forget to donate http://uk.movember.com/team/444749

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Chris

http://uk.movember.com/team/444749

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Chris

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Chris

Once you’ve measured the power draw in watts (or guesstimated the power draw), you’ll need to convert that to kilowatt-hours. Here’s the kilowatt-hour calculation for my server, which draws ~200 watts:

The other thing you’ll need to know is how much you’re paying for power in your area. Power here in Congleton is a grand total of 12.495p per Kilowatt-hour.

So leaving my server on is costing me £218 / year, or £18.24 per month.

So what can we do about it?

• Configure the monitor to sleep on inactivity. This one’s kind of a no-brainer, but worth mentioning. A CRT eats about 80 watts, and a LCD of equivalent size less than half that.

• Disconnect peripherals you don’t use. Have a server with a CD-ROM you rarely use? Disconnect the power to it. A sound card you don’t use? Pull it out. Redundant fans? Disconnect them. That’s only a savings of a few watts, but it all adds up.

• Move to the cloud. For £18.24 per month you could have six cloud based email accounts, professionally managed, anti-virus and anti-spam protection. And you would even have some change.

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Carl