You read the title correctly, just when you think XP might finally bite the dust, boom, Microsoft extends the downgrade ability another year.

The most recent plan was to allow those who buy Windows 7 equipped machines between launch in October and six months after that the ability to downgrade to XP. However, for companies skipping Vista altogether, that will only give entire IT departments 6 months to integrate an entire suite of new equipment, which in the enterprise market, is a blink of an eye.

So, several major firms spoke out about this idea, and Microsoft caved into pressure and is now allowing Premium and Ultimate users the ability to downgrade to XP for up to 18 months after Win7 launch. Or until a Win7 service pack is launched (if it needs one).

Now, we're sure there's some technological reason (most probably the aging file system) why Microsoft wants to kill XP, but if so many people wish to keep a hold of the years old operating system, why replace it?
Noone we've spoken to prefers Vista (or Windows 7 beta) to XP, surely they'd realise that something about it made it popular?
They struck a good balance between features and tightness, but seem intent on cramming in as much as possible into an OS with an interface that is actually a fair departure from the massively popular XP.

It baffles me.

[Source]