XP clients can/will run in virtual machines in corporate low budget hardware. Clients cheap, network bandwidth increased, securised access, higher server CPU utilisation. lower (so they say) TCO and lower fossils burn (or carbondioxide output) because of lean machine with lower risk (but some 'network' congestion can be expected, even with IPV6)

they call that a terminal farm, Citrix wrote the book ms read to get on to that trick.  Kinda like the Netscape/IE debocile.
Citrix stole the idea from WYSE... shall i go on

so Mac or Linux?

I think XP support will die the day M$ switches off their activation servers.

This is a primary reason why I have ditched Windows on my own computers and am actively working to minimize Microsoft's presence in my organization.  I have also ceased creating custom installs for people - to the horror of a couple hundred people where I work.

last time i went trolling for stats for Fuel... Why I chose not to support Vista.
I landed at several universities and google (at the time google still published that info).
- I choose four that vista showed up on.

http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewtopic. … 523#p10523

There were more users browsing the internet on Win98 than Vista....
4% of the hits was for Windows 98... Twice as many as Vista at 1.9%

It's still not doing very well! http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2009/January/os.php
(wow 98 still had 529,387 users)

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
2008           WinXP  W2000  Win98   Vista     W2003   Linux   Mac
December   71.4%  1.7%     0.1%   15.6%    1.7%     3.8%   5.3%

One thing is clear MS Windows accounts for 90% of internet browsing hits.

If something works well (is quality) then it will become and remain popular. No amount of marketing will change this.
I love the Mac comercial where the MS guy has two stacks of money. One to fix Vista and one to market it.
The Mac guys says "That is not enough money to fix Vista" and the MS guy says
"yeah your right" and moves the repair money to the marketing stack! - LOL -
So True! They could have fixed it for the money they spent to try to convince us it was not junk!
(by this i mean if Vista were transparent to older Apps then business' would have adopted it, and a larger share of end users)

I expect that Windows 7 has the potential to either become like Windows Win2k  (Released with 64,000 known bugs) or
to become the next XP / 98se... Given MS's new trend to produce a quality product, as we have evidenced with the XP SP3 release.
I expect that W7 wil be the product that we can recomend to clients with confidence. (is it just coincedence that quality became important when Bill left)

If we take it as a Given that W7 will be like 98/XP.
Win 98 survived another five years after the release of XP.
We can then project that XP will survive until five years after the release of W7. 2009 + 5 = 2014.
(amazing how I just arrived at the same year as the crititcal update cutoff suggested by MS)

Jeff

but wouldn't internet browsing still be safe, using secure browser? i've always wondered what's the point in critical updates anyway, as my browser seems safe as it it. p.s. i don't use java. maybe i've got my finger in the eye?

p.s. mr_smartepants, you've made a good point bringing in the activation issue. but, for the purposes of the discussion, perhaps we could assume the windows copy to be preactivated? that would bring to the ultimate question: how long would such a preactivated xp really last?

(1) until extended support ends (when ms coffee patchers become bored)
(2) until nvidia stop supporting xp (when driver programmers run out of coffee)
(3) would last forever (so we can all continue to work with our coffee-driven bodies)

what do you think? please cite your sources, etc.

Sources for my thoughts?

Well, my brain, mostly, unless I'm pulling something outta my ass...