XP needs to live until 2009

[SRTDodge05]

BEANCOUNTERS working for Gartner and Burton Group have issued an open warning to Microsoft to keep Windows XP available at least until 2009.
Currently, the Vole plans to switch off the life support on XP in June even though the patient is not dead and is probably getting better.
Burton Group service director Richard Jones told Infoworld that in any operating system transition, you need to have the original and new products running side by side for a couple of years.This gives punters a chance to do a decent migration.
The Vole, however, initially told punters that they would have 11 months to fiddle and tweak before extending the deadline by another six months. This 17 months is still far too short a time, Jones said.

XP needs to live until 2009 - The INQUIRER

[XJ.]

Well, there is an easy fix for MS. Make the Corp version available till 2009, but cut off consumer sales in June (hence prompting a spike in XP sales in may )

[Kimbo]

i still believe, if history is correct, that there will be xp versions for sale that will be sp3 versions, even if only oem. that's always been the case so far.

[3 of 7]

XP will live just fine until hardware advances to the point that there just aren't drivers for it anymore.
Now, weather or not we can pay M$ for it is another story.
Which brings to mind another point, if a company discontinues a product and no longer supports (or sells) it, Is it illegal to download and install it? In other words, is the EULA no longer a legal document because it's discontinued?

[ctal]

Originally Posted by 3 of 7

is the EULA no longer a legal document because it's discontinued?

Unfortunately I don't think so. For one thing, I would assume that there are lots of other terms in the EULA that protect them in various ways (besides the terms that control user installation), that would not lose their relevance simply because it was a product that is no longer sold (such as prohibitions against decompiling/reverse engineering, etc). And it won't be fully discontinued anyway, in the sense that M$ has said they will continue to provide security updates until 2014.

-- Al