At least as far as corporate customers are concerned, Microsoft's "drop dead" (which seems to be their message to users, as well) date for ending Windows XP sales will remain as previously mentioned: June 30, 2008. XP as a whole will not be disappearing, however; XP Home will remain available through at least 2010... and thereby hangs a tale.

As covered by Todd Bishop at the Seattle P-I, the reason for continuing to sell XP in some form is that (wait for it)... Vista is too bloated to run successfully on the new classes of ultra-lightweight PCs being distributed by a number of manufacturers including Intel and Asus. Initially, Microsoft made no effort to extend Windows onto this class of low-end computers, trapped as it generally is in the prevailing "bigger is better" view of hardware and apparently unable to see the appeal or utility of such minimalist machines. But for those who value functionality over form, the last important hardware advance was probably the original Pentium chip. At that point, computers became powerful enough, with proper coding, to accomplish 90% of the tasks most of us use them for. Most hardware advances since that time have been eaten up by eye-candy and bloat which has had little to do with functionality; so with Microsoft ceding the market, low-end PC manufacturers were able to customize lightweight Linux distributions to provide all the utility required on such boxes.

With the market expanding Microsoft has decided it wants in; but with the rumored MinWin lightweight Windows kernel (the expected heart of the next generation of Windows) available yet and with the main corporate strategy heading the wrong direction with Vista, XP is really the only option if they want to participate.

This is swell... I'm all for more competition in the market, and it wasn't any better to have Linux dominate on these machines than it would have been for Windows to do so. But, and this is what mainstream reports seem to have overlooked in the matter, the other thing that this indicates is that Microsoft's traditional argument for phasing out operating systems has finally been revealed for the steaming pile of manure that it is. That argument has always been that it's impossible to continue supporting products indefinitely after new ones come out; resources are required to support and improve Vista which wouldn't be available if XP were still in production, and the company simply has to move forward.

This isn't a terrible argument... I have generally accepted it in the past, even when it seemed to be strategically unwise. But if XP is going to continue to be produced and supported for Home users (a more demanding support case for the company, since they have no corporate IT department to turn to for basic support matters; and this is now focused on low-end hardware, besides) then it could hardly be more expensive or complex to continue to support the Pro version. XP Pro is being discontinued for no reason other than to pad Microsoft's pockets with forced Vista upgrades.

Microsoft is a private company, and of course it's their every right to do this for whatever motives they have. But it's important not to let them hide the fact behind lame excuses, because as consumers, you have to understand where you are on the totem pole. When it comes to a massive company with market dominance, business becomes more a matter of leverage and force than customer service and market appeal. Make sure that you aren't trapped into making decisions that are better for your vendors than they are for your own business.