I read an article today talking about Windows XP SP3 coming out quite soon (it’s due towards the end of April, but you can get the public Release Candidate 2 Refresh here), and it made me wonder about the current software lifecycles we have out there. For those wondering, Microsoft makes all their software lifecycles available, and after doing some searching, here is a very interesting one to note:
June 30, 2008 - PC manufacturers stop selling computers with XP installed.
Jan. 31, 2009 - Microsoft stops selling XP altogether.
April 14, 2009 - Mainstream support (free live support and warranty support) ends.
April 8, 2014 - All support for XP ends.
Or, to quote another article:
Microsoft has already made changes in its timetables. Last year, the company extended the sales life cycle — the time during which PC manufacturers and system builders could sell computers with XP installed — to June 30, 2008. It will stop selling XP altogether on Jan. 31, 2009. And it extended the mainstream support period for XP to April 14, 2009, in an effort to reassure customers made nervous by the long delays in shipping Vista.
The result of all this tweaking is that Microsoft will stop selling XP long before it stops supporting it. You may be able to run XP for as long as you want, but before too long you may not be able to buy a legitimate copy of XP to run.
So for all of you “Windows XP or Bust!” people, you may find yourself where the “Windows 98 or Bust” people were back in 2001. 
Speaking of those people not wanting to change, you’ll get a laugh from this article in which the author compares two articles written by the same author (Randall C. Kennedy) for the same magazine (InfoWorld) with the only difference being that one was written about XP vs 2000 and the other about Vista vs XP:
Let’s compare and contrast those 2007 statements with their 2001 counterparts. Remember, this is the same publication, with the same author’s name in the by-line.
On Windows 2000:
2001: “IT departments should take advantage of license downgrade provisions and continue to press forward with Windows 2000 deployments until the installed hardware base catches up with XP.”
2007: “Windows 2000 doesn’t count since it was never a mainstream product.”
On why your old OS was better:
2001: “Windows XP increasingly ate the dust of Windows 2000 as load ramped up, regardless of machine specs or Office version.”
2007: “[E]xhaustive testing confirms that Windows Vista is at least twice as slow as Windows XP when running on the same hardware.”
On hardware:
2001: “[U]ntil 2GHz desktop PCs become commonplace, we have a hard time recommending widespread adoption of Windows XP at all.”
2007: “Windows XP SP3 … absolutely screams on today’s high-end, multi-core desktops.”
On “bloated” new features:
2001: “Shops lured by XP features should weigh their options carefully. In many cases, these features may not be compelling enough to justify saddling your end-users with a slower OS.”
2007: “Vista, which is basically Windows XP with more “stuff” heaped on top, and you begin to see why so many users are balking at the upgrade message. There’s simply not enough “meat” to justify the pain involved.”
Get the picture? Back in 2001, Kennedy and InfoWorld were bashing XP and recommending that their readers stay with Windows 2000. Today, they’re bashing Vista and hawking their “save XP” campaign. But judging by the progression that XP made in six years, all that the Windows Vista architecture needs is time and a hardware replacement cycle or two.
Isn’t that great? I’ve been telling people for months that the excuses they were giving me for why they refused to upgrade to Vista were damn near identical to the ones used to not upgrade to XP, and now I have proof. Thank you, Internet!
