Opinions needed on the continuation of support for XP

[Vinny]

I'm having a bit of a situation at work concerning software now that we purchased a Vista machine... very complicated, but here's my question:

What do you folks think about whether XP will continue to be supported well by MS in the coming year or more until Win7 comes out?

The case is I have to dump Vista on the comp that was just purchased for XP if we want to continue to use this software suite... or i get a new software suite... either way I'm shelling out money for the OS or the software.

So really, do you think MS will continue to be on the ball with XP? I'd imagine so because of Vista being SOOO bad (only problem is my office guys are starting to like Vista).

Let me know, thanks!!

~V

[EzyStvy]

You can go find the "Product Lifecycle" info at MS's web site....

Put it to ya this way-> There are still many people using Windows 98....

[law99]

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223

Took me a little while to find

[Vinny]

I had a hard time finding the lifecycle as well, thank you VERY much for the link! This is very helpful information, I've never actually seen confirmed MS support lifecyle dates.

Thank you both!

Ordering XP Prof. right now actually.

Thanks!

~V

[systempat]

There are a LOT of businesses that are very reluctant to upgrade to Vista. For a bunch of reasons, most have to do with money. They don't want to buy a bunch of new hardware and get forced into buying faster processors and more memory. Serving software applications if you have a mixed environment of XP and Vista machines is complicated and expensive. Being forced into software version upgrades and buy a whole lot of per-seat licenses. And there's more but......
Anyway the very large corporation I work buys a whole lot of DELL machines, they are one of their biggest customers. All the desktop and laptop machines are being downgraded to XP Pro until sometime in 2009 at least.
Now on the consumer side (Retail sales) I'm not so sure. M$ wants to make their sales volume. They say they're cutting it off in June. Despite the "Save XP now!" campaigns on the Net, they may stick to it. They will give decent customer support for 18 months, after that they will stop doing patches and the free customer support will phase out too.
That being said I have my 2 home systems on XP home and am not planning to upgrade yet. I could change my mind next year or I could get new hardware and start out with Vista (or the next version they are rumored to be pushing forward) and then retire the hardware that will be a little old by then.
-------->>>> Pat

[glc]

I hope you ordered OEM and not the full retail.