Officially released at the end of December 2001, Windows XP continues to be favored by most corporate IT managers, with relatively few organizations going down the Windows Vista route today. However, with mainstream support for Windows XP Professional officially scheduled to retire in April 2009, it is possible that some organizations might rush into new deployments or upgrades of Windows Vista, and in the process cause chaos and mayhem within their businesses or institutions.
Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle Policy, which went into effect in June 2004, states that the company will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. In detail, this means that mainstream support for business and developer products is provided for five years, or for two years after a successor product (N+1) is released (whichever is longer).
Microsoft is also committed to providing what it calls extended support for the five years following mainstream support, or for two years after the second successor product (N+2) is released (whichever is longer). In effect, this takes the shelf life of Windows XP Professional to April 2014.
The difference between the mainstream and the extended support phases will be of little consequence to the vast majority of organizations, with the only things to worry about being the loss of: no-charge incident support; warranty claims; and design changes and feature requests. Additionally, those organizations requiring non-security hotfix support will have to purchase this within 90 days of mainstream support ending.
With a growing body of users demanding Windows XP on their computers rather than Windows Vista, Microsoft is reported to have introduced a scheme that allows people to roll back installations of Vista Business and Ultimate edition to Windows XP by calling a customer support center and getting an activation code. However, a quick search of the Microsoft website failed to turn up any details – which is hardly surprising.
Many vendors have had to back-pedal on the issue of offering Windows XP on new laptops and PCs. For example, Dell – one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of PCs – is already acquiescing to user demand and reversing its decision to ship Vista-only PCs earlier this year. So it seems that the time has come for Microsoft to re-think its plans for XP.
Some will recall Windows NT Server Pack 6a, and so with reports of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) already circulating on the web, it looks like IT managers can relax for a few years more before embarking on Vista upgrades.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
