Microsoft Corp. has announced that it will drop mainstream support for Office 2003 on April 14, the same day it starts to retire Windows XP.
Office 2003, which was last updated in September 2007 with Service Pack 3 (SP3), will leave mainstream support in less than two weeks, and enter extended support. Typically, Microsoft keeps a product in the former for five years, then shifts it into the latter for another five. Microsoft launched Office 2003 in November of that year. It stopped shippping the suite to developers for new projects almost two years ago.
According to Microsoft's standard policies, mainstream support delivers free fixes -- for security patches and other bug fixes -- to everyone. During extended support, however, nonsecurity hot fixes are provided only to companies that have signed support contracts with Microsoft.
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/162606/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws
