Windows XP: the Final Countdown Begins

Next month, on April 8th, Windows XP users will experience their very last Patch Tuesday. After that date, Microsoft will no longer provide updates of any kind. If you've been meaning to upgrade to a newer version of Windows, it's time to stop procrastinating and take action.
As long as you have Windows Update currently enabled, the end of support for Windows XP shouldn't come as a surprise. Last week Microsoft pushed out an out-of-band update titled "A notification about the end of Windows XP support." Once this update has installed, you'll get periodic popup reminders that support is ending. Don't check the box to turn off this reminder; leave it in place until you've taken action.
Escape from XP
Windows Vista will hit the end of its road in just three years, so there's no sense at all in upgrading to Vista. Windows 8.1 is, of course, the cutting edge at present, and it won't sunset until 2023. However, Windows 7 is much more popular. It makes up over half of current Windows installations, and it's good until 2020.
The question is, does that old clunker of a PC meet the hardware requirements for a newer Windows version? XP's needs are quite modest. It wants a 233 MHz processor, 64MB of RAM (128MB recommended) and 1.5GB of free disk space. Vista wants ten times the amount of free disk space, an 800 MHz processor, and 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended). But you don't want to install Vista.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 both require a minimum of a 1 GHz CPU, and the minimum RAM for both is 1GB for 32-bit editions, 2GB for 64-bit editions (4GB is the recommended amount of RAM in both cases). Windows 7 wants 16GB of free disk space; Windows 8 wants 20GB.
If your antique XP computer has an antique graphics card, you won't get the impressive graphics effects that beautify modern Windows versions. You'll need a graphics card with at least 128MB of video RAM. Of course, you may be able to retrofit your system with such a card.
Microsoft does offer a handy Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant. It will check whether your PC is capable of running Windows 8 and assist in the upgrade process. Too bad it's not compatible with XP...
Batten Down the Hatches
Perhaps your XP system just isn't powerful enough to handle a modern operating system, or you rely on legacy software that isn't compatible with other Windows versions. If you're going to keep using it, you need to make a few changes.
First, install a full-scale security suite from a vendor that plans to continue support for XP. Without the security benefit of a fully-patched system, your security software is the only protection you've got.
Modern Windows versions come with Internet Explorer 11; in XP it's stuck at version 8. Ditch Internet Explorer and choose a browser that's still being supported. Make sure all of your third-party software is fully updated; a tool like Secunia Personal Software Inspector 3.0 can help.
Try this experiment. Uninstall Java, Adobe Reader, and Flash, and see if you can manage to do without these vulnerability-riddled tools. If you must read PDF files, consider a less popular PDF reader, one that's less subject to hacking. Actually, consider uninstalling any third-party application that you don't actually need.
When your PC is connected to a home router, wired or wireless, it gets a significant amount of protection from the router's Network Address Translation. The PC has a local-only IP address that's not visible from the Internet. Don't give up that protection by connecting to a possibly-compromised Wi-Fi hotspot. With no security patches for XP, that connection could be deadly. Yes, this stricture makes a Windows XP laptop less than useful. But do you really want to be seen in public running XP?
Current estimates suggest that over 30 percent of Windows installations are still running Windows XP. That's huge. If any of your PCs are among this group, now is the time to start either upgrading or hardening them. Don't wait until XP is dead and buried!