Much to many PC users sadness, Microsoft has announced it has ended “mainstream support” for Windows XP, meaning that there will be no more free per-incident support.

Win XP, first released in October of 2001, now enters the “extended support” lifecycle stage. The total Microsoft lifecycle support cycle lasts 15 years, with mainstream support, extended support and custom support each lasting five years apiece.

XP users will still be able to get security patches automatically through Windows Update. In addition, it doesn’t cost to call Microsoft if you have a problem installing Windows XP. However, calling Microsoft about other support incidents will cost the user money.

The news is sure to rattle some, especially IT professionals of whom 97% said in a recent poll that their companies or organizations are still running XP. Surely much to Microsoft’s chagrin, 83% of them also said they’d skip Vista and wait for a stable Windows 7 to be released.

From the survey:

The vast majority of participants (84%) do not plan to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year. The most likely path for participants to adopt Windows 7 will be to go directly to this new release and skip Windows Vista. Those few participants who will be upgrading to Windows 7 in the coming year say that avoiding Vista is their primary motivation for the upgrade. Most (67%) state concerns about Windows 7 with 88% of those worried about software compatibility. Economic factors are contributing to the delay in Windows 7 adoption for almost half of all participants. Participants are generally more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than staying with the increasingly out-of-date Windows XP.

I made the jump to Windows 7 a few months ago and have been happily surprised. It’s way better than Vista, though I do admit missing the control, navigation, and simplicity of XP.

Either way, today marks the beginning of a slow death for XP.

jared@zeropaid.com

From May 31, anybody using a beta copy of the OS will find that their machine reboots every two hours, and that intermediate access will be limited to base-level file retrieval. That means that you could lose data you’re working on, and that your machine will be good only for reformatting.

This isn’t as bad news as it seems. Users who had taken part in the Vista beta scheme – millions of people, in fact – were all given free copies of Vista Ultimate by the Vole as a ‘thank you’.

We suspect that this is more likely to affect those individuals who were using copies of the Vista beta nicked from mates or from BitTorrent in a bid to avoid having to pay for the full thing. The quick phase out means that this is possibly the shortest post-release beta Windows has seen.

Continue reading to see the screenshots and also to download Dr. Chang’s Windows Vista permanent activation crack.

After cracking, type “slmgr.vbs -xpr” and it says that windows is permanently activated.

The analysis released on Thursday by the Toronto-based Softchoice Corp. found that half of the business PCs being used in North America today are incapable of handling Vista’s needs.

About 94 per cent are not able to run the premium version of Vista, the company found.

"This is a classic example of the glass half-full, glass half-empty situation," study author Dean Williams told CBC News Online on Thursday.

One cracked version is called VistaBillGates and comes with a product key, and an “activation crack” that bypasses Vole’s activation process.

Apparently Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition has also been cracked. So far Microsoft has refused to comment about hacks, but claims it is working hard to stop pirates.

Apparently the weapon it will use is software that deactivates pirated copies of Windows Vista by sending a patch through Windows Update that can invalidate certain product keys.

I went into Best Buy a couple of months ago to purchase a new PC, since I really need to have a Windows machine around for some of the work that I do. I was looking for certain criteria in the computers, but having the latest and greatest graphics card certainly wasn’t the highest item on my list. I knew what I needed, and I couldn’t justify spending the extra money for things that didn’t really matter all that much to me.

Despite my firm stance, the employees working in the department kept trying to pressure me into purchasing an upgraded rig that was better for gaming, but even though I’m a male in my early twenties, that doesn’t mean that all I want to do is play video games.

Unlike me, there definitely are a lot of you who enjoy playing video games frequently, and the numbers have shown that the industry is huge. Gamers invest a lot of money in optimizing their systems to get every ounce of performance that is possible, and there’s no doubt that Windows XP has been put through a lot in the name of gaming.

David C. Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development, spoke to reporters after meeting with European Union antitrust regulators but refused to give details on those talks, beyond saying there had been no particular agenda.

“It’s been our view that any new version of Microsoft products that include search, that that be done in a way that preserves user choice for search and other applications,” Drummond said. He said that Google would monitor the situation but that it was “too early to tell” if there were would be any antitrust allegations arising from Vista.

But the latest fight over its upcoming Vista operating system pits Microsoft against an unlikely adversary: the security software vendors who are some of its most intimate partners in protecting its notoriously vulnerable systems from attacks.

As Vista’s planned release nears, the company is facing a backlash from such vendors as Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., which argue that even the concessions Microsoft recently made to appease European antitrust regulators won’t do enough to help them best protect their customers.

“We’ve been talking to them for over two years on this issue,” said Rowan Trollope, Symantec’s vice president for consumer engineering. “And now (with) basically a very short amount of time before the operating system comes out, we’re not in a good position to provide that security to our customers.”

Microsoft Takes Steps to Lock Pirates OUT
Not only do I find this extreme but they’ve added to it. Vista is now limited to only one change of system. If you have Vista on a system and want to change the license to another system or maybe your laptop, they say fine, but that system is the only change you can make. Never again can you change the system choice.

Vista is limited to ONE license change and I’m not sure if any excuses will get you past the Microsoft team.

Also, in the license, Microsoft forbids users from installing Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium in virtual machines. “You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system,” it reads. Vista Ultimate and Vista Business can be installed within a VM.

It also states that when Vista periodically goes to recheck and validate the software, and if any changes are found, it will severely limit the use of the software functionality if not properly licensed.

I think that’s way too much information transferring between systems. Even those that legally obtain Vista will have to jump through hoops to keep it on their systems. How unfair is that?

What does this mean for Vista users? Choice. McAfee has already announced a security risk management strategy for those using their software with any version of Windows, currently. Now they are moving forward in preparation for the Vista OS.

Both companies have taken steps to bolster the security options for their customers. Symantec is stressing their new technology, ‘Security 2.0′, is the way to go. It is a whole line of products, partnerships and services that will group together to provide a user more security than previous offerings.

After Microsoft announced on Monday that they will be offering companies like Symantec and McAfee access to core components of Vista, I’m sure the third party software companies were ecstatic at the opportunity to begin development of new services. Announcements came out immediately and both companies claim the “better choice”.

And why not? They should have the right to help us protect our systems, no matter which OS we choose. Compatibility is key to security with so many attacks and opportunities open to the hacking community at present.

Microsoft still holds to the fact that PatchGuard in Vista will be sufficient to keep the OS protected but, with past Microsoft claims, I’m not so sure that will be enough.