TUESDAY, July 1, (News Locale) - Microsoft's premier operating system Windows XP was officially retired yesterday amidst much hand-wringing by users as well as sellers. From today, Microsoft will no longer license Windows XP through a majority of sales channels. 

What is more retailers will also be unable to get new Windows XP stock and will only be able to sell until their current XP stock runs out. Windows XP remains popular with consumers and InfoWorld.com has launched a Save XP petition.

The said petition (http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/) was launched on January 2, 2008 and had over 200,000 signatures as of June 30, 2008.

The petition that was sent to Microsoft honcho Steve Ballmer exhorts users to sign up, "Join the 210,161 people so far (as of 9a PT on June 27) who have signed our online petition to demand that Microsoft not stop OEM and shrinkwrapped sales of Windows XP as planned on June 30, 2008, but instead keep it available indefinitely."

However not all is lost. Windows XP will continue to be deployed on ultra-low-cost-PCs until June 30, 2010, while smaller computer makers known as "system builders" can deploy XP until January 31, 2009.

Furthermore Microsoft will continue support for Windows XP. Mainstream until 2009, while extended support is due to end by April 2014.

Microsoft will focus on Windows Vista from now on, but the new OS is not exactly ready. While Redmond claims to have sold 140 million copies, there are still some major bugs that need to be sorted out. Windows XP has been dominating the market for seven years now.

Ballmer has said that Microsoft will not allow such a huge time gap between Vista and the next Windows release called Windows 7. However with users refusing to come out of their XP comfort zone it remains to be seen if Vista can make any impact at all.
 

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