What is puzzling is how Microsoft expects to service their OEM customers who build UMPCs and will have no viable replacement for the relatively light-weight Windows XP OS if it is withdrawn from the market. Even given ultra-mobile hardware advances, such as Intel's relatively new Atom processor, UMPCs will not likely be able run Windows Vista, or any similar derivative OS, in a manner acceptable to their customers, the end users, due to its footprint and overhead. Perhaps Microsoft plans on dumping that market? It is a relatively small market that Microsoft might be able to palatably abandon to alternative OSes such as the various Linux distributions.

Ultimately, Microsoft will force business end users, and to a lesser extent home end users, to use a different OS by killing-off the venerable XP OS through ending bug-fix and security updating for that OS. Home users in large part are notorious for failing to update their PCs and OSes, continually providing a large Petri dish for hackers and malware distributors to remotely use as they see fit. Microsoft can only count on part of that market to be forced to adopt a new OS, and that will mostly be through hardware attrition. One only needs to look at the alarming number of Windows 98, ME, XP RTM and XP SP1 OS installations that continue to be used in an unpatched state since the moment of purchase to verify this point.

Businesses for the most part will not risk their data and livelihoods by using an unsupported OS, no matter how much more preferred that older OS is. Like it or not, when Microsoft turns off the valve for security and bug fixes for XP, business will be forced to jump ship from XP. Whether they will land back on a Microsoft-published OS, or not, will be dependent upon if other OSes find a way to run Windows software transparently like XP does, and provide a comprehensive support and updating system as Microsoft currently does. Regardless of the belly-aching from Windows users and IT pundits about Automatic Updates and Genuine Advantage, Microsoft overall keeps their software working in a relatively convenient manner, which is something that is generally lacking in other OS distributions.

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