Last week there was a minor uproar over the possibility that Microsoft might stick to its published product support commitments and terminate support for Windows XP Home at the end of this year. In my comment on the issue, I predicted : “Microsoft has no intention of pulling the plug on Windows XP early.”
And sure enough, as Gregg Keizer at TechWeb discovered today, the official Microsoft Support Lifecycle document was quietly rewritten this week. Now, in the entries for Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, and Windows XP Media Center Editions 2002, 2004, and 2005, the notes read:
Mainstream support will end two years after the next version of this product is released.
Windows XP Professional gets the same reprieve, with an additional five years of extended support tacked on as well.
So, XP users, you can relax until late 2008.
Ed Bott 
This was always pretty obvious.
Anyone who seriously believed MS would pull the plug at the end of this year, when their new OS was barely a few months old was simply crazy. If it was a tech “journalist” who espoused that position they should hand in their press credentials. It was simply not credible.