XP is still preferable to VISTA ?

No matter how much of Microsoft's effort to promote and persuade people about how great is Vista, but many people still prefer XP, because they received many complaints about Vista, and are mostly related to the poor performance, incompatible to other programs & devices and also the annoying security pop-up windows. So, the passion is still on the six-year-old Windows XP, which has already ended, except for the XP Home edition on certain class of computers.

Microsoft has extended Windows XP deadline (but only for Home Edition), mainly to cater for the ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPC) or ultra-mobile PCs (UMPC) which are also a hot selling products, eg. Asus Eee PC. The decision of the extension, is also because of Windows Vista is not an option for those class of PCs with minimum hardware specifications. Thus, the ULPC/UMPC makers will be able to sell XP Home through 30-Jun-2010, or 1 year after the release of Windows 7, whichever is later. In this way, Microsoft can stand-out and to compete with Linux which is already being targeted by those device makers.

The change of deadline are not confine with their standard products timeline, so, they are planning the next version (Windows 7) which can handle much broader range/class of PC specification, compare to Windows Vista which require hefty hardware requirements.

Vista sales are way off expectations, which has given new life to Windows XP. Besides, Microsoft's licensing is very complex, examples, the 6 different Vista versions and it has confused many people who looked it has only 4 Vista versions.

1. Windows Vista Starter (sold only in emerging market)
2. Windows Vista Home Basic
3. Windows Vista Home Premium
4. Windows Vista Business
5. Windows Vista Enterprise (only for volume licensing customers)
6. Windows Vista Ultimate

Microsoft has been monopolied in the most important technological aspect (computing) and for the past 7 years, we can see the maturation of IT industry which has continously revealed many capabilities in which the Windows XP is the reason for that.

As of March 2008, OneStat says the various flavors of Windows (Vista, XP, 2000, ME, NT, 98) has dominated the global 'desktop' market with 96%, compared to about 3.3 percent only for Mac, and about a third of 1% for Linux. And Windows Vista has only 13% share, much lower than XP which has 79% share.