OK, color me surprised. The last thing I expected from Microsoft was for the company to extend Windows XP’s life for an unbelievable ten-more years. I thought Microsoft might extend XP Home’s life for a while to try to keep Linux-powered netbooks at bay, especially those with Google’s forthcoming Chrome operating system under the hood, but the business XP line? Until 2020!? I never saw that coming.

You see I had though Microsoft was selling a lot of copies of Windows 7. Certainly, that’s what Microsoft has been saying. Last January, Microsoft CEO and chief cheerleader Steve Ballmer had claimed that, “U.S. retail data shows that Windows PC sales jumped almost 50% the week it launched.”On Black Friday, [NPD] reported that retailers sold 33% more Windows PCs than the year before. And for the 2009 holiday season a 50% increase in Windows PC sales from last year. Last year was a tough year, but these are still phenomenal numbers.”

I guess the word we should have been paying attention to in this speech was “tough.” A lot of other people have theories about why Microsoft is doing this. Of them all, I find Preston Gralla’s theory, that Microsoft did it to con… ah “get enterprises to buy Windows 7 now rather than later” to be the most persuasive. But, I don’t quite buy that one either.

More >