XP's 'Last Day' Less Final Than Gates' - Page 2

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XP support another issue

Another problem waiting in the wings is the end of mainstream support for XP.

"Customers will receive mainstream support for Windows XP until April 2009," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com.

A Microsoft spokesperson said that a customer buying XP today would get roughly nine months of mainstream support before April 2009, and five years of extended support.

While extended support is available until 2014, that is more maintenance and security patches than anything else. Typically, Microsoft extends support after it issues a full service pack, but "you're not likely to get another XP service pack," Cherry said.*

One major complaint among both home and corporate users is that, in its quest to bolster Windows' security – a lack of which it had been severely criticized for earlier this decade – it went perhaps too far. Administrators and users complain loudly, even today, about how intrusive the security prompts are.

Another of Vista's problems has been that it hasn't been able to live up to its advance hype, even now, a year and a half after it shipped.

"Windows Vista offers significant advances in security and productivity and we recommend that enterprises that have not yet deployed it should absolutely evaluate its benefits," Veghte's letter said.

However, many analysts and customers don't see that much – if any -- productivity enhancement so far.

"Nobody's convinced me how, with the workload I do, that Aero Glass [Vista's new graphical interface] does anything for me," said Cherry. "Is there anything Microsoft can say [that's going to help me] to write one more article a week? [Otherwise] that's not going to increase my productivity," he added.

* Update adds a clarification on future support from Microsoft and clarifies a quote from Cherry.