In another stunning revelation that Microsoft recognizes they've lost the war with Windows Vista, late last week the software company announced they will be extending XP's life by another six months. Specifically with this accouncement and as reported by Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft says,

"What's changing is Microsoft is giving six more months where it will provide downgrade media for XP Professional for OEMs and system builders to provide to their customers who purchase Windows Vista Ultimate and Business editions - (which the company figures will be) largely going to be small businesses since that's the audience that would want/use XP Pro. So it's the same old downgrade right thing that was in the EULA (End User License Agreement) before; it's just Microsoft is providing the media to partners a few months more."

Mary Jo correctly sees the forest for the trees with this announcement, "Even though Microsoft is maintaining publicly that Vista is finally ready for prime time, it is allowing PC makers to continue to offer customers XP. So what's a user to believe? Is Microsoft really standing behind Vista?"

With evaluation copies of Windows 7 being released at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference at the end of this month, this revelation makes a lot of sense. Microsoft appears to be telegraphing its recommendations to IT environments worldwide: If you've made the jump to Vista great, but if you're still on XP you might considering waiting it out a bit longer.

If you're a self-described Vista hater, then steel yourself for the soon-to-arrive Windows 7 launch. Although I haven't seen the OS with my own two eyes, the screen shots leaked to the Internet shows a Windows 7 that resembles Vista in a lot of ways.

One positive aspect that it definitely has going for it is in being the second Microsoft OS released with Microsoft's new security guidelines, those that force drivers and applications out of kernel mode (and the feature that caused virtually every application and driver to break at Vista's release). This feature was fantastic for system stability and security, but was simultaneously a marketing nightmare for Microsoft. Being somewhere around two years past that problem, it is likely that Windows 7 won't see the same level of issues.

So if you hate Windows Vista, what to do? The advice of this blogger is to get its binaries early and come to your own impressions.