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If you like your operating system you can keep it.
But if your OS is Windows XP you might want to think about that.We have known for some time that Microsoft would stop delivering security patches for XP this coming April, but now they are saying they may not update their XP Essentials Security Antivirus signatures after that date. If you rely on Essentials for your protection, you will be in deep trouble.Unlike Comodo Antivirus protection, Essentials relies almost entirely on a “blacklist” model for identifying viruses and malware. It compares a file to the descriptions of known viruses in the signature file and takes action if there is a match.There are some 50,000 new viruses unleashed upon the computer world every day and a virus scanner must get regular updates to its signature file to be effective. You can only imagine how the effectiveness of the XP antivirus protection will quickly deteriorate.Microsoft is clearly trying to frighten XP users to abandon their old, but reliable platform. This may not be a very nice way to treat their customers, but you need to take it seriously if you or your organization relies on XP. Hackers know that XP will be left virtually unprotected next year and will paint a big red bull’s-eye on this portion of the desktop market.Despite this, users have been remarkably slow to abandon Windows XP, first introduced way back in 2001. As of this month, according to Netmarketshare.com, XP still retained 31% of the desktop market. This is second only to Windows 7 with 41%.Without the regular security updates we cannot recommend anyone who connects to the internet continue to use XP after April 2014. However, if you choose to do so you absolutely need to upgrade your anti virus protection. With Comodo Antivirus you do not have to worry about updating your signature file. We have cloud scanning where the signature file resides in Comodo’s cloud and is always up to date. Importantly, Comodo uses the blacklist approach as just one line of defense in a multi-layered protection strategy. We also use a “whitelist” of known safe programs and behavior testing (aka heuristics) to determine if a program is safe to run. If there is any doubt, a program is run in a safe, secured area called a sandbox where it can do no harm to your system.Unlike Microsoft, we provide all our customers with world class virus protection.This is true whether you are a subscriber or use a free edition. Our goal is to protect our customers, not scare them!

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