I agree - part of the reason is that XP surfs the Internet well and almost all "plug ins" work with it.  And the majority of computer users just use it to surf - so an 8 year old computer with a browser and a solid OS still works fine.  And XP fits the bill.

Which brings me to the next question: The ethics of what they're doing/not doing. No argument that XP belongs to MS and in all truth is theirs to support or not, but I do feel it's unethical to force XP users to go and buy something else if only because their money helped position MS to conduct the R&D to come up with Vista and 7.

There's really nothing 'wrong' with XP that WB doesn't fix.  

One might argue that ethics has no place in the business world. 

Microsoft is a business and the goal of a business is to sell products and make a profit.  Included in their business plan is developing and marketing updated or new products. 

Why do auto makes have new models each year? 

They are only 'forced' to do so only if they want IE9. IE8 will likely be supported with updates for some time to come, so it is not like they are being abandoned. MS just did not want to make IE9 worse in order to support XP, nor did they want to have to create and support two versions of it.

One might not be correct.

This is true.  However, eventually MS will quit fixing bugs, which is a death knell to any program these days.  Still, many people live with buggy software, so that is not "forcing' them.  It is just a VERY strong suggestion.

With that thinking, we would all still be on win95. It worked fine at the time. 98Se worked just fine. Hell, I was happy with DOS back in the day.

 

Too many software companies WRITE buggy software with no !@#$% accountability at all for their actions. Pisses me off to no end.

That's the day this thing becomes a door stop.  

 

Actually that's the day you get to mess around with Linux...

However they have continued to provide updates for a very long time in the past. They were still supporting IE6 when IE8 was out.

Unless software has a subscription fee, it is unreasonable to expect it to be supported indefinately.

OK! Cool!

One big thing to emphasize is that you simply don't need a new computer every few years anymore.  Nevermind the recession - a four year old PC is well behind the curve as far as what is on the market today, but it still does everything a general user needs it to do.

I was happy with W95 also but i changed to 98 just to see whats new and to be honest i loved it...Its also not bad to check upcomming OS features ,cause after you checked you know how to work with it.I know many folks that are unable to operate a w7 system but thats because of the lack of interest i think.
Im also one of those guys that will immediatly upgrade to W8 since i work a lot on my personal computer and there have been sweeet changes to the user friendly section.Also there is a huge performence upgrade and driver update an example a 95 system that required a format C: back in the days could be easiely fixed with system rollback in vista.There is so many benefits under w7 compared to 95 that makes it a nightmare for me to even think about using it ever again.uff when i think back to the old 95 days  it was a pain in the butt to format your pc and get every driver installed again.
My compare to that windows 7 (of course its not recommended to just update your old OS.You can but i learned to walk the safe way and make a fresh install.)
95 install up now you had to install drivers mainboard and so on, windows 7 is diffrent you install you update the OS and your done.Thats a huge step i think.
And i think windows 7 unless EP was intended to be Personalcomputer software rather than enterprise software.
I understand the current hype about the Ie9,but its all marketing thats why you get a mp3 along with it.But sooner or later it will come to win95.Its just a matter of time.And besides there is still FireFox.

thats true.. im still using an Intel q6600 mounted on an old Asrock board attached with 8 gb´s of ram no problems.
Even in games i didnt notice flaws i can play Crysis 2 for example on Extreme smoothly and im only using a GTX260.
I mentioned it before you dont need to get yourself a fancy I7 AMD whatever.The gaming industrie is far behind most of the games get developed for consoles and portet afterwards.So why get a new system now? The current hardware prices are insane the only benfit i can see is upgrade your main HDD to SSD the performence punch is defenitly noticeable thats why most of the user that got themselves a SSD have windows index of 7.9
you pay 200 bucs for a 50% faster system. its better than pay 1000+ bucks for a new system that has a windows index of 6.9 max.