As a longtime troubleshooter and seeker of stability in IT infrastructure I would say that Microsoft's "abandonment" of XP as an operating system effective June 30th 2008 is shameful at best. Realistically they are not really abandoning XP but surely making it harder to implement it on home machines or others bought through retail channels. This impacts individuals and small businesses more than enterprises.
With the advent of Service Pack 2 came one of the more stable OS's we have known. Everyone knew how to use it, most applications ran on it, and drivers were seldom an issue. Now that Vista is being forced on a small segment of the user population we now have the joy of doing downgrades, making application performance and drivers more of an issue. Three cheers for Microsoft indicating they would "support" XP through April 2014. The question is, if you are going to support it that long why not make it easy to get it for those who want it?
A majority of enterprises I speak with are delaying Vista implementation until 2009 or after and now that Windows 7 is slated for delivery in January 2009 who would go with Vista anyway? Perhaps it is because Microsoft has warned all of us that going straight from XP to Windows 7 is not advisable, or that they have never met a delivery schedule for a new OS since..... well ever.
Suggestion for Microsoft- Let XP be widely available until support is no longer available and let the end user or their support staff decide which OS is the most appropriate one to use.
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