"during its announcement Thursday that it would extend the availability of Windows XP Home for low-cost laptops, Microsoft said it would retire the operating system only after June 30, 2010, or one year after the release of Windows 7, whichever comes later."
The rest of the article is located at InfoWorld. Thanks out to Kim Komando for the link in a great daily newsletter. If you want more info on Windows 7 check out the screen shots at Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows. For interested geeks - Paul is the dude that discovered Sony's nefarious root kits in CDs.
What does all this mean? Vista is not selling at the rate expected and Bill Gates is a smart marketeer. He is going to recoup some losses by releasing an operating system, Windows 7, in a timely fashion. In a way this is sad because Vista is not really that bad. It certainly doesn't need to be categorized with Windows ME (Millenium) which was an all time flop in the Windows family of operating systems. Yes, Vista is a resource and hardware hogzilla, but it does offer some nice built-in protection, speed, etc. After some user problems my version of Ultimate is stable. One of Microsoft's worst mistakes with Vista was the horrendous initial price. Smart business people are not necessarily "trendy" and don't fix things that aren't broken. This attitude and the high price pretty much stopped the small business operator and professionals from upgrading. Okay, okay, the compatibility issues with hardware and software didn't help either. There are no plans at the beach house to upgrade any other resident machines to Vista, but I won't give up Vista Ultimate on my main workstation. 
Yes, this machine is hardware heavy. The real reason for its existence is that I finally started playing my first online game in December 2005. It was a gift from my dear friends Neal and CC. A great one too; GuildWars. My youngest daughter and her husband (Beagle and Mudslingr) had me hooked before I even received the game. Now a few nights during the week (when time permits) I can be found prowling the countryside of Tyria, Cantha and Elona looking for treasure, fighting nasty beasties, and interacting with friends and family members. The recent hissy fit about TeamSpeak is resolved. My bad. We 'voice talk' to each other while doing these quests and missions. It's a chance to catch up with everyone's recent activities while dragonslaying. Also a great time to exchange information about the computer world. Techs become chatter boxes when discussing things geeky and nerdling-ish. The striking air elementalist in the picture is Cynndane Eloise (my daughter in Baton Rogue) and the dude in black is my gamer alter ego, Maskull Tor. Grow up? Ha! Living a bad case of the Peter Pan Syndrome here with no plans to change. Enough rambling. Time to turn to and if enough is accomplished then I'll have a few hours to cast spells, save damsels, enjoy characters of the fantastic realm, and laugh with family and friends. Thank you Professor Tolkien for my glimpse into the world of fantasy. Thanks Easel for turning me onto J.R.R.
"If you've never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame."
~Counting Crows
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