About 2 days ago I read on ZDNet here that Microsoft announced that they wouldn't be extending the life of XP which basically means no more PCs/Laptops preloaded with XP, they did this despite numerous protest letters from all over the world beseeching them to reconsider. The phase out is scheduled to begin on June 30th. May be its just me but I don't quite get whey MSFT is hell bent on killing of XP yet they know that the reality on the ground if that Vista is yet to achieve the penetration that XP and its predecessors i.e. Windows 2000 Professional & Server, attained. May be my opinion is a bit one sided, but I'm thinking of the numerous schools in developing countries (many of which are in Africa) that can't afford that Vista upgrade and all they know and understand is the world of XP, shouldn't they at least be given the leeway to continue using XP.

The flipside of all this is that may be this is the push we need so that we can have a mass exodus from MSFT to the Free Open Source OS like the ever wonderful Ubuntu. This could provide the necessary catalyst for institutions to shift from proprietary and expensive software, in the long run its the right way to go. Unfortunately in Africa we fail to seize such opportunities and make the best of them, in fact we sit around and say "If we were using Linux we would not be facing this problem", fixated on the past mistakes instead of motivated by the challenges and opportunities the present day avails to us, this must change and now is the time.

Carpe diem is what I say, let's use this opportunity to advocate for FOSS (Free Open Source Software) and drastically change the Operating System landscape in this continent once and for all.

Disclosure: I'm running XP Media Edition on my Laptop.