It’s official. June 30, 2008 was the day Microsoft began phasing out product sales of Window XP. The software giant will cease providing retailers with copies of Windows XP. Brand name computers will also only ship with Windows Vista pre-installed. The only computers that may continue being sold with Windows XP are ultra-cheap systems mainly used in charities.

So how does this effect you? Well if you’ve already made the switch to Vista, you should shouldn’t be bothered with this news. However, should you still be running XP or planning to purchase a computer with XP installed, you should consider a couple of points.

First, Microsoft won’t stop supporting Windows XP until next year. They’ve officially stated that XP will be fully and freely supported by online updates and patches until April 2009.

Secondly, Microsoft is already working diligently on the successor to Vista, dubbed Windows 7. They have stated that it should be released by late 2009, however, Microsoft is known to miss release dates by months.

And lastly, there’s no need to rush. If you’re at a point where your Windows XP computer isn’t very able to run Vista, then simply keep XP for now and plan to upgrade sometime after 2009 has passed. We should know more about what Microsoft will be doing around that time.

To read the official letter from Microsoft about the fate of XP, click here.

Via Digg.com and ZDNet.

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