Kurt Shintaku's Blog

New Microsoft Support Lifecycle Newsletter available – register today!

We are going to be publishing a newsletter that you can subscribe to that will tell you precisely what products are phasing into another support cycle. (going into extended support, requiring a service pack to receive hotfix support, or losing their support altogether)

This will be a quarterly newsletter.  I will not be notifying you of the information in this newsletter moving forward because of the amount of content involved:

One of the bigger highlights this month is the complete end of Windows XP Service Pack 1 support on October 10, 2006.  There will be no support available for SP1 users and there will be no security updates available.  Customers must migrate to Service Pack 2.

Here are some other notable highlights of this month:
– Java Virtual Machine Support Expiring completely –December 31, 2007
– SQL Server 7.0 and Exchange 2000 transitioning to Extended Support – December 30, 2005
– Windows XP — Mainstream Support Extension
(Windows XP was scheduled to end Mainstream Support on December 31, 2006.  However, its follow-on release, Windows Vista, is not scheduled to ship until late 2006.  In keeping with Lifecycle Policy, Windows XP will remain in Mainstream Support for two years after Windows Vista’s release. Dates on the external site will be updated once an official release date for Windows Vista is announced.)
– Office XP transitioning to Extended Support — June 30, 2006
– Windows 98, Windows 9Second Edition, Windows ME completely unsupported – July 11, 2006
– Exchange 5.5 completely unsupported – January 10, 2006
– Office 2003 SP1 completely unsupported —October 10, 2006
– Outlook 2001 for Mac completely unsupported July 11, 2006

There are over 100 products listed in the list so please subscribe ASAP.  You will be able to subscribe to the Quarterly Lifecycle Informational Update directly from the Microsoft Subscription Center:

https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/SubCntDefault.aspx.