Microsoft, having quietly thrown in the towel on the fight to convince die-hard XP proponents (or plain-old Vista haters) to upgrade before the release of Windows 7 some time in the next year or so, has taken another step backward across the "line in the sand" XP drop-dead availability date. The company had set January 31, 2009 as the last date on which XP would be available to suppliers and OEMs, that date being an extension of the previous June 2008 deadline, which itself was an extension of the original January 1, 2008 deadline to stop selling the product. Now, Microsoft has decided to continue providing XP through May of 2009 via distribution, although orders for the product will still have to be placed by the end of January.

This may seem like a technicality, but it will allow many vendors to continue to stock XP licenses and continue selling them probably through the end of 2009. By pre-ordering and hording, this would have been possible in any event, but the fact that the companies can delay delivery will likely allow them to keep far more in stock than they would otherwise have been able to afford if January had been maintained as the delivery cut-off date.

I badly underestimated either the widespread distaste for Vista in the market, or Microsoft's resolve in pushing Vista on customers, becuase I had fully expected them to stand by the January '08 deadline in the first place. It may be worth heeding other commentators, then, who see this additional exhibition of weakness as a sign that perhaps Microsoft isn't quite finished caving on Vista just yet. On the other hand, how much more do they need to cave, anyway? This arrangement should make it entirely possible for any company that wants to continue running XP while waiting for Windows 7 to be released to do so without any exceptional degree of planning or stocking.