Doesn't mean XP will stop working - just that you won't get any more updates.
We made the jump to Win8 a few months ago, against our will (our laptop died and Best Buy didn't have any Win7 machines on the floor). Couldn't be happier. Once you use "classic shell" to get around that silly "metro" screen and get to the desktop, it's the most stable Windows I've ever used (going back to Win3). From what I read, it's also the most secure Windows yet. Much as I miss XP (I knew how to tweak it), I really like Win8 (and I'm learning how to tweak it).
al