Windows XP’s Mainstream Support Ends Soon

We’ve been hearing about a supposed death of Windows XP for quite a while, but up to this point, not too much has happened that proves that the OS is really on its way out. Well, that’s until now, since Microsoft will be moving to pull all mainstream support for the OS within the next three months. From that point forward, it will be put on “extended support”, which will be beneficial to companies, not the end-user.

The humorous thing in all of this, though, is that Windows XP really isn’t that ready to die. The reason is its usage, which is still sky-high, despite the fact that Vista has been out for now just over two years. According to our analytics software, 63.55% of our Windows visitors in January were using XP, while 32.28% ran Vista. Though numbers aren’t unlike other places on the web, though, which makes things even more interesting.

XP will become the first OS to have it’s plug pulled while still in the so-called prime of its life. I admit that I’ve come to enjoy Vista a lot more since its launch two years ago, but XP is still one heck of a stable OS. To add to it, this will also be the first time that Microsoft has pulled the plug on an OS still being sold. Netbook vendors have been wise to include XP on their lower-powered devices for obvious reasons, but after April, the support for the OS will be shifted from Microsoft over to the vendor.

My question is, after April hits, will people really decided that the time is right to finally go upgrade to Vista, or wait for Windows 7? I have a gut feeling at the answer is no with Vista, but things might begin to change a little bit with 7, especially since it has the capability to run just fine on netbooks as well.

“If you’re buying a netbook with XP, you have to accept that XP is not in mainstream support,” Cherry added. Not that that should matter much. “XP is well known by this point,” Cherry argued. “A significant number of its problems have been identified and resolved, so the chances aren’t great that there would be some new major issue.”