Windows XP (released 2001) has yet to sing its last song. Mainstream support from Microsoft will last until 2009 and then extended support kicks in until April 2014, so sometime after 7 years from now XP will finally rest in peace. Mainstream support covers no-charge incident reports, warranty claims, design changes and feature requests while extended support includes purchased hot fixed agreements, paid support and the Microsoft XP Knowledge Base. The bottom line is that Microsoft has stated that they will be providing security updates for XP users until as late as 2014. This is a far cry from XP users left in the cold, or being forced to go to Vista in 2 years. The way they are handling it is similar to what occurred with Windows 98. Extended support on Windows 98 lasted until July 2006, 8 years after its initial release, and that deadline was extended a couple of times when Microsoft found that many users were still using older Windows. I’m sure Microsoft would love if every single XP user would pay to upgrade Vista between now and 2009. But this is totally unrealistic. So for now...the heart of XP is still beating.