ID: IRCNE2013081942
Date: 2013-08-31
According to "zdnet", Patch Tuesday, April 8, 2014, Office 2003 and all its constituent applications, will also receive their last updates.
Office 2003 was a wildly popular version of the suite, for reasons which mirror, to a point, the reasons why Windows XP was so popular and remains so entrenched: It was a good version, functionally.
If you look at vulnerability histories in the years since, vulnerabilities in the old formats have continued unabated, and the new formats have been pretty clean. They also released the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack in order to allow Office 2003 users to access the new formats.
But Office 2003 was good enough for a lot of people, and it's still good enough for a lot of people.
The bottom line is that there's still plenty of action on the Office 2003 vulnerability front. Just as with Windows XP, don't be surprised if many new vulnerabilities for Office 2003 show up on April 9, 2014 when their value in the malware marketplace will be much greater.
So what are you to do next April when Office 2003 goes out to pasture? I'm not sure what to recommend to you, other than that Office 2003 will not be a safe product to use. Personally, I'm using Office 365 and I'm happy with it. The latest versions of Office really are markedly better than those of 10 years ago, and designed to work with the devices and Internet services that people want to use. Whatever arguments you may have 5 years ago had for sticking with Office
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