We all know that Windows 7 is on the horizon. We all know that Vista is a huge hunk of junk. We all love our Windows XP, which is why we are willing to pay a little more for the “downgrade” to XP that a number of manufacturers will ship, even though the machines officially count as having been sold with Vista (Microsoft loves to punch up its Vista numbers this way). Now, Windows XP is about to pass to the next stage, drawing us closer to the end of one of our favorite OS’s life.

Mainstream support for Windows XP ends on April 14, which just happens to be the next Patch Tuesday. What does this mean for everyone? Well in simple terms it means a few things:

1) No more Service Packs or feature upgrades! This of course is something that can be expected. XP can only do so much and handle so much, seeing as it is way beyond what Microsoft intended its lifespan to be.

2) No more free incident support. Yep, any support from Microsoft for XP is now fully chargeable. Make sure you know your way around google, Microsoft’s knowledge base, or know someone who is a tech that can help you.

3) No more Warranty Claims. Yep, XP is out of warranty, even if loaded on a brand new machine by the manufacturer. How does this affect the fact that Microsoft still pushes XP for Netbooks? Time will only tell if they are smart and make an exception, otherwise, make sure you get a netbook with Linux on it.

Now not everything is doom and gloom. There are still some thing that the Extended Support Phase, which is what XP is going into, does give.

1) The Microsoft knowledge base, and support site still will have all the XP information it can hold. So you still can look through all the things.

2) Security updates will still be pushed out. It is important to remember that Security Updates are different from Feature Updates. While no no features of feature bugs will be fixed, at least any Security Holes that could allow viruses, such as Cornficker to grab a hold of your machine, will still be created and pushed out, and this will continue until 20014.

So XP is not dead yet, but instead is more on life support for the next 5 years. Personally, I would have likes Microsoft to have pushed XP 64 bit more and longer instead of forcing Vista out there. The other thing is with end of mainstream support, Microsoft now can reallocate resources to other projects. Here is just hoping that Windows 7, which is in beta and has been getting decent reviews, doesn’t get screwed up and suck when released.