You may have noticed that I added a widget in my home page sidebars that counts down the days until the end of support for Windows XP (SP3). This happens to correspond to the same date for the end of Office 2003.

I'm doing this as a reminder that you need to take action now. If you are like most small businesses, you probably can't afford to suddenly replace all your aging XP machines or even to invest in upgrading both the hardware (if even possible) and software to bring them to Windows 7.

As of this writing, the count is in the 850s. That's over two years and it sounds like plenty of time. What you need is a plan. For some tips, see last year's admonition.

Just don't wait.