This notion that there will suddenly be 5000 gazillion 0days as soon as XP loses support in April, and that as soon as you go on the Google homepage on May 1st, is ridiculous and absurd.
I've been running unsupported XP SP2 on one of my older machines for over a year now. It's connected, runs applications, email, and internet services. No hacks, no worms, no rootkits, no nothing.
Just use a good antivirus and you'll be fine. AFAIK there hasn't even BEEN a 0 day patch for XP in more than 3 years.
I think that if I had a 0day at this point, I'd wait until May to use it - exactly because the support ends and MS is unlikely to release a patch. Since lots of people will not care enough to upgrade, that could be a gold mine :)
I'm not quite a security expert, ask tptacek for confirmation, but you can never be sure. However, signs do start to crop up, and I haven't had any of the supposed "symptoms" of something like TSS/TDSS.
I've been running unsupported XP SP2 on one of my older machines for over a year now. It's connected, runs applications, email, and internet services. No hacks, no worms, no rootkits, no nothing.
Just use a good antivirus and you'll be fine. AFAIK there hasn't even BEEN a 0 day patch for XP in more than 3 years.