IN AN effort to boost the flagging sales of Microsoft’s newest operating system Windows Vista, the company has decided to stop selling Windows Xp to retailers. But, Windows Vista, in spite of its 3-D graphics and the other frills attached has not captured the interests of average buyer. Windows E"Xp"erience, which was released in 2001, has long been embedded in the hearts of the people and is simply refusing to die out. When Windows Vista was released in early 2007, Microsoft expected it to be the logical upgrade to Windows Xp.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, people are refusing to budge from Xp. Its partly due to the fact that most households feel Xp is good enough. It’s long delay might have been another cause for Vista’s sluggish start, the long time gap of more than five years has made the users feel at home with the Xp and are hence are skeptical to change.

Besides most of applications and games designed for Xp don’t work in vista. Some users have even heralded the switch from Xp to Vista as a "downgrade" and not an upgrade.

It remains to be seen if the ’junta’ decides to switch over to Vista or wait and watch if Windows 7 is any good. Microsoft’s plan might just backfire, the general public opts for a cheap yet popular pirated copy of Windows Xp instead of the expensive yet largely unheralded Windows Vista.

Microsoft have their hands full in the present scenario, losing out on the Yahoo! bid, losing to Mozilla Firefox and Ubuntu and even losing their founder Bill Gates. It’s testing times for Microsoft, it remains to be seen if they can bounce back with a bang with this latest toss of the coin!