OK, software never really dies. You can keep running it forever, if you insist.

But Microsoft has made it pretty clear that they do not thing you should be running XP. You're getting critical security updates only until 2014. And it's rather tricky to purchase a new copy of XP (you pay a premium and it typically involved buying a new OS first)

Yes.. they support it until 2014. My 'dead' comment was really that from a feature set point of view. I'm supporting, but I'm not adding any new features. As a software company aren't you wanting your customers to upgrade to the latest and greatest?

They may want people to but it is happening very slowly. One big problem is that XP has all the features most users need and a big price tag on windows 7 doesn't help. Every windows before XP ended up having large game breaking issues which meant the customer base would switch quiet fast to the new one when it came out. Sure windows 7 is a nice addition on top of XP but in terms of day to day usage most people would easily be able to get by on XP.