XP off-line

Six or seven years ago I bought a Dell Inspiron 530S. About two years later its hard drive failed and I replaced it with a 120 GByte SSD. Originally I ordered the 530S to come with both Windows XP Pro and Microsoft Office 2003. In the meantime I bought a generic PC with Ubuntu Linux as its operarting system. I have my reasons for having both machines and I really do like both, but for separate reasons.

Earlier this year, I was caught off guard when I heard Microsoft was terminating their support for XP. In May I decided I would just take it off-line. The vast majority of my internet activity I already do with my Linux machine. A then a couple of months ago Office 2003 decided it needed to reconnect with its mother ship. The message I received was, words to the effect, re-connect to Microsoft to certify that the Office 2003 software on this machine is legit, or after opening fifty more Office documents, it will no longer function as it did when I originally purchased it. So, since I still had a few months remaining on my Norton Internet Security subscription, I re-installed Norton and allowed ET to phone home.

When I got to the Microsoft website, I received a message saying there were nine security related updates available. I decided to take advantage of the offer and started the update process. It turned out the number of updates was more like 148, many of which were said to be previously unreleased security updates; about half were for Office 2003. Even though I immediately took my XP machine back off-line, I later developed a serious case of buyer's remorse about these updates. I begin to wonder if M/S had really checked these updates out good.

I guess as long as I remain off-line, they do not matter much. First, question: am I correct to believe that it would be a big mistake to delete these updates? Second question: can I expect Office 2003 to want to phone home every year or so? My Norton subscription is about to expire and I really don't want to keep paying just for going on-line a few minutes every year so ET can phone home. Is there a way of turning this annoying feature off in XP or is it in Office 2003? Either way?

 

if you are only at sp2 then there are about 200 updates at sp3, there are approx 100

I would update all the way to april 2014 which is the cutoff date for support for xp and no NEW updates will be made.

and yes if you use office 2003 ( I do also), you want to update that as it will give you the options to install the office 2007 compatibility packs for 2003.

All updates correct a security hole or an existing problem with os.