Actually, January 30th, 2008 was the first deadline XP faced.  One extension occurred, and then perhaps thanks to the 200,000 signatures collected by the "Save XP" drive, a planned June 30th cutoff was disregarded, as well.

Now, Nilay Patel reports, "Vendors will still have to place their orders before the official cutoff date of January 31, but they won’t have to take delivery (or pay, we’d imagine) until May.  All of this is supposed to alleviate the problem of vendors stockpiling copies of XP — it wouldn’t be good for Microsoft if manufacturers start charging a demand-related premium for XP licenses after Redmond goes Vista-only."

And Vista’s unpopularity is almost certainly one reason behind Microsoft’s move.  All sorts of companies and organizations have failed to embrace the operating system, even as many individuals continue to regard it with suspicion (see Microsoft’s own Mojave ad campaign).

Growth in the netbook sector may be to thank or blame (depending on one’s point of view), as well, since most of those machines aren’t even capable of running Vista.

Bookies are probably taking bets as to whether another extension will keep XP around until Windows 7 is released.

Let’s talk about in-use operating systems first.  According to Steam’s latest monthly hardware survey, XP dominates.  Its market share, though down a bit since October, remains more than twice the size of what Vista has captured.  And PC-imposed restrictions appear to have little to do with the state of things, as dual- and quad-core machines were common in Steam’s sample.

 Steam Hardware Survey Results

If Microsoft doesn’t manage to make Windows 7 something special, the company appears ready to encounter a rather serious problem.

Then there’s the matter of searches for game consoles.  Microsoft’s doing a bit better in this regard – Hitwise says its Xbox 360 ranks third with a share of 15.6 percent.  Sony sweeps up the next four spots with the Playstation 3, PSP, PSP 3000, and Playstation 2.

But the real winner is Nintendo, with the Wii and DS Lite grabbing market shares of 36.7 and 26.4 percent, respectively.  And sure enough, if you do some early-morning shopping, these products are what most of the rabid customers will be after, too.

I have not seen a Taiwanese equivalent to the ACSI, but it is pretty evident that some people in Taiwan aren’t real fond of Vista either.

In fact, the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s practices.

The investigation was sparked by complaints from the Taiwanese Consumer Foundation about Microsoft using a monopoly to make people buy Vista.

It is no secret that Vista is not the most popular version of Windows to date. Reports circulating today are even suggesting that a third of Vista users are abandoning it to go back to XP.

Something tells me that Microsoft will be taking a much harder look at Windows 7 (the next version of the operating system) than it did at Vista before unleashing it on the world.

With as much controversy as Vista has sparked, I’d be surprised if the new one didn’t bear more resemblance to XP. If that is the case, you can count on plenty more "why not just leave XP alone" discussions online and off.

On the other hand, you can expect that either way.

ComputerWorld reports that there are 2,000 developers and 25 "feature teams" working on Windows 7. Let’s just hope that strength rather than bedlam is really in numbers.

The crowd yells, "Let XP live!"  The skinny guy fidgets, and responds, "Um, we need more feedback." 

Yes, this is Microsoft PR at its best, folks.

Infoworld started a "Save XP" petition in mid-January; since then, over 75,000 people have signed it. 

This, in our analogy, is the chanting crowd.

Now for the skinny guy’s response.  "We’re aware of it, but are listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs," a Microsoft spokesperson told Computerworld.

He then continued, "That’s what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us."

We are not responsible for any ocular damage that occurs during extreme eye rolls.

In any event, XP should be available through at least June 30th of this year, and it sounds as if Microsoft hasn’t completely ruled out another extension of its lifespan. 

Sales figures alone might force the company to rethink things, since, even as Vista gradually catches on, people continue to lean towards other alternatives.  Microsoft’s execs are hardly looking to boost the market shares of Linux and Mac OS X.

For now, though, we’re left to look forward to the release of SP1 and watch the "Save XP" campaign grow. 

Maybe one thing or the other will budge the situation in some way. 

Microsoft, for its part, is lucky that the skinny guy’s encounter is only an analogy – at this rate, a little mob violence would probably have occurred in real life.

2010 – or late 2009 – is when the next version of Windows is supposed to launch, and – assuming that it isn’t delayed – two or so years doesn’t seem like a long time to put off an upgrade.  “A year after Microsoft released Vista to duplicators, 38% of companies claimed they had no plans at this stage to deploy the operating system,” reports Gregg Keizer.  “Another 14% said they just didn’t know.”

From Microsoft’s point of view, that can’t exactly be encouraging – Vista was supposed to be the company’s Grand New Product.  Meanwhile, regardless of how well XP is doing, competitors are probably looking at those statistics as a great opportunity to grab market share.

Still, although Vista’s semi-failure may be embarrassing and somewhat financially hurtful, it’s not likely to overturn the entire OS market; many Matrix owners did, after all, wait for Hotchkis’s second batch of sway bars.

The whole idea is brilliant from a marketing standpoint. Video game developers are constantly looking to utilize the latest in graphical technology to provide immersive experiences for their gamers. It’s only a matter of time before the newest and hottest titles will all require DX 10.

Consequently, this becomes the point in OS process where the sounds of “cha-ching” from cash registers everywhere come together in harmony, ultimately composing a financial opus of profitable proportions for Microsoft.

But does the exclusivity of DX10 to Vista really just boil down to cash? Or is there something we’re missing?

Microsoft developer Phil Taylor seems to think so. In his blog, he documents the company’s rationale behind the decision to develop DX10 solely for Vista, while leaving XP users out in the cold:

Given the new features in the driver model and hardware (with GPU task switching, GPU memory management and more ) all of which require kernel support – hoisting a driver layer like that on XP is rewriting it to be Vista.

At some point, the question "to serve existing customers" or "to get new customers" is a question every business has to ask itself. Given XP has had a 5+ year run it is hard to see how XP customers have a strong case they were not given good value for the money. Especially when the features in question are ones that are a rewrite of the kernel and the driver layer, and require such a hw leap. Really.

Hmm, there’s a covert message here. Microsoft is essentially saying that customers should feel grateful to have received five years of development and support for a particular operating system and should be happy to shell out the cash for the next upgrade, repeating the process ad nauseum in five year increments.

Perhaps re-writing XP’s kernel to support DX10 isn’t feasible. The technical reasons for Vista exclusivity seem valid enough.

It’s just the financial convenience of the arrangement that leaves gamers skeptical of Microsoft’s motives.

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You know, it seems to me that Apple gets blogging even though they don’t encourage most of their employees to blog. They see bloggers ask for things and they deliver. Bloggers then go wild.

Apple, in its MacWorld booth back in January made a big deal about podcasting and blogging.

They certainly are understanding how to use blogs to listen to their customers.

And, yes, I +am+ jealous.

On the other hand there are some at Microsoft who are listening too. Atlas, new developer technology that helps developers use Visual Studio to build ASP.NET applications, came straight off of feedback on blogs.

Does Apple need blogs? Not if it keeps responding to what bloggers want.

And, yes, I’m very tempted to buy a MacBook.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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