Microsoft has announced a change of plans: they are going to extend support for Windows XP all the way until April of 2014. By support, this means that they will release and develop security patches and critical updates for the favored OS. XP was scheduled to no longer be sold this year, with security updates tapering off in 2010, but Microsoft faced a minor backlash over this, due to the popularity of the operating system.

Furthermore, while you will no longer be able to buy XP licenses after the end of this month directly, Microsoft will allow Vista buyers a 'downgrade' option -- while some would not call it a downgrade, this option would allow people to get a new license for XP.

As you are probably aware, Microsoft's Vista adoption by the mainstream has been somewhat slow. For computers with a bit less horsepower (such as the EeePC 900 released this month, and older machines) XP is generally a better fit because it requires less resources to run satisfactorily. Many, many buisnesses have stuck with XP, not seeing any real benefit of going with Vista, so this probably factors into Microsoft's decision to extended the support for the OS.