Even though you’ll probably find Microsoft on the internet headlines for another reason, there is a problem, they still haven’t addressed (properly) concerning the market that made them what they are today: their Vista OS.

Although the demand is still high for Windows XP, Microsoft has been forcing their partners to “upgrade” to Vista by refusing to sell them more licenses. There was a lot of debate regarding this issue, and thus they ended up changing the final date for purchasing XP until June.

Analysts predict that if enough Microsoft consumers complained that Microsoft wouldn’t be so stupid as to ignore their pleas,  and would maintain XP in the market indefinitely. Trying to make consumers adapt to a new interface that is different from XP, but not significantly better, after having it in the market for 7 years is a difficult task. And it takes more than pretty transparent effects to convince people to change. The following quote pretty much sums up all of my opinions on the matter:

“The difficulties that new users and former XP users experience when learning the Vista interface tend to suggest that — for all of Microsoft’s extensive customer usability research — the company’s perspective on what is intuitive is still somewhat removed from the reality of many users’ experience.”

If you would like to contribute and help keep XP further in the market, and thus be given more support, then you can sign the “Save XP” petition that is being organized by InfoWorld.