They have. XP, XP SP1 and XP SP2 are out of support, XP SP3 has support for another 18 months, I think (you can check the exact dates on MS's website).

I have XP around but I haven't used it much at all for at least three years now at home. Both machines I use daily are currently running Ubuntu. The only thing I really need Windows XP for now is my scanner which unfortunately Linux doesn't support (Epson is notorious for lack of Linux support). Personally Open Office does everything I want and a whole lot more so I have never missed MS Office though I have Office 2000 on an XP machine. Gnucash looks old fashioned and also very 'QuickBook's basically to be easily picked up and handles private/small business accounts very adequately. Scribus copes with my modest DTP requirements fine and so on. None of which costs a penny.

The comment about changing an OS with the computer is very valid but what about the anti virus software, office software and so on needed? I suspect quite often people are already using open source/free alternatives. It was those costs in large part that initially got me interested in Linux. My mothers laptop is running XPHome but in fact everything she uses is opensource/freeware (Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, Picassa for her photos, Skpe very occasionally and AVG free for anti-virus.) She's been told, and doesn't mind the idea, that when XP dies it's getting replaced with Linux.

Oh and they wouldn't need to change hardware so often perhaps. (Just put Puppy Linux plus Open Office on an 8 year old laptop and the owner is very happy with the result. Wouldn't run Win2000 at more than snails pace and I gave up trying to find drivers for Win98 that would work. The desktop I use most is a 1200Hmz Duron with newer but basic FX5200 graphics card and pretty responsive even running Ubuntu with mid level eye candy settings on. Given it has ample RAM I suspect it will do decent service for a couple of years yet unless the MB fails.)

I've persuaded the little charity I support to put Ubuntu on its laptop and no one has complained about it though a number of people use it. Most of the software apart from the OS they use on the other machines is opensource/freeware so the applications are the same. They even generally find the server without prompting fine. They are obviously basically unconcerned what the machines run as long as it works and they get their work done. They're quite happy with the idea that when the XP machines die they get Linux rather than a reinstall of XP. (Helps they have legitimate copies but have long since lost the discs and license numbers and I haven't mentioned I can recover the license number from the machine if I want to and do a legal reinstall via that )

Richard.

As above. I wiped my mum's laptop and freed it from virus-prone XP long ago. She's quite happy with Ubuntu, and she can now happily use Firefox, Openoffice etc without any problems. In fact, she prefers Ubuntu because it's nippier on her Celery laptop than XP was - esp. when the latter was bloated with anti-virus etc.

I use Ubuntu on my laptop from day to day and dual-boot Vista and Ubuntu on my desktop. I've little doubt that linux has a future on the desktop, but not without some of the 3rd party software houses coming on board first - linux needs things like Photoshop and Itunes to give new users that familiarity.

GNU/Linux also needs to agree on a package manager so that developers only have to provide one installer - not one for debian/APT, YAST, RPM etc. This probably won't happen but if they could get the OEM's who've been peddling netbooks with linux to standardise on Ubuntu, rather than the various unfriendly or under-developed alternatives like Xandros and SLED, then we may get somewhere. A Steam-like client filled with the various "installers" that have been released - for Prey, Doom 3 etc would be nice too.

The reasons to look for an alternative are numerous - bloat - each version of Windows is getting fatter and heavier but there's still a lot of hardware that is still capable of getting you onto the internet.

Licensing costs - one £200 Vista or W7 license is fair enough, but if you've got more than one PC in the house you are starting to talk about a serious outlay. The missus and I both have laptops and I have a desktop - If we decide to adopt W7, that's another £600 to fork out. Sure there are OEM licenses, but technically we're not supposed to use those.

Viruses are a given - they're not really a problem on linux, but most of us know about that.

Reading some of the stuff over in the Psystar files for bankruptcy likely delaying Apple case thread, I think end users would be fine switching to Linux.
When my family bought a new computer a couple of years ago, it had XP which is quite a bit different to Win98, IE 7 was very different to IE 5 or 6 which was on the old PC, we even got a new version of Office, and got Outlook rather than Outlook Express, it all looked and felt different.

My point? Mum hated it, she's ok with it now because she is used to it. If they had just switched to Linux and we had told we had upgraded it, she would have hated it for a bit and then just got on with it...