When you go to the Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search website it says that Windows XP Home “Extended Support Date” is indeed in April 2014 however there is no more “Mainstream Support”. However, according to the same website all support for Windows Home XP SP3 ended two years after its release date which was in April 2008.

Support ends 24 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product's support lifecycle, whichever comes first.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?alpha=Windows+XP

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/04/15/windows-xp-sp3-release-dates

The bottom line is that XP development and updates are no longer being done by Microsoft except for Security updates. The product is essentially a dieing one.

There are numerous differences in W8 vs XP in terms of the coding. While avast! 7.x will no doubt work with XP SP3 I wouldn’t think that Avast is gearing its development of avast! 7.x to be compatible with XP SP3 but most likely W7 and W8. I expect to see numerous problems running avast! 7.x on an XP SP3 computer. More than we see now. JMO :slight_smile: