Windows XP, The Incredible Immortal Operating System!

I love Windows XP. A lot. I've been a user since day one, and three of the four computers in my home are still running it beautifully. The fourth is a...

Ty Dunitz

Published July 13, 20101:05 PM EDT1 minute read

I love Windows XP. A lot. I've been a user since day one, and three of the four computers in my home are still running it beautifully. The fourth is a Mac. So it comes as delightful news to me to hear that Microsoft is again extending downgrade rights to XP, until - get this - the end of Windows 7's life cycle.

This means, simply put, that Windows XP will be alive and well in 2020.

Initially, Microsoft had planned to axe downgrade rights six months after the release of Windows 7, later extending that plan to 18 months, which would have given users hungry for XP until next year to downgrade. But now? Now you'll have all the time in the world, should you feel the need (and assuming your copy of Windows 7 is OEM). "Our business customers have told us that the removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing," said Brandon LeBlanc on Microsoft's blog.

He's not wrong: 74% of business machines are still running XP. And why fix something that isn't broken, right?

Right?

What blows my mind is that XP was originally supposed to die one year after Vista treated the world to its bad self (the operating word here being 'bad'). But we all know how that went.