XP era ends?

Larry Dignan over at ZDnet asks:

XP era ends: Will Vista step up?

Larry assumes that Vista is inevitable, and that anyone who questions it is unpatriotic... er... just a complainer. He then goes on to the straw men:

If you’re a Vista complainer you have two options from here:

• Move away from Windows completely (users try a new OS and developers jump ship).
• Or shut up and go with Vista.

Now, the false choice here asserts that all non-Vista operating systems will suddenly and completely have no value once Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom says so.

There are a lot of reasons to avoid Vista like the plague. People went along with having pre-loaded Windows back when new versions were generally an UP-grade... but Vista breaks far too many things, and causes way too much grief. There is a lot of user hostility being build up over this, causing people to start searching for alternative platforms as an escape route.

Linux seems to be the platform of choice, be it on a Mac or a PC. We can all run XP under VMware if we need to run some application that can't get ported eventually to Linux. Microsoft is quite aware of the place they are putting everyone into, but really has no choice in the matter. They desperately want to keep their OS market share to help drive their Office cash cow, but know that this is ultimately a losing proposition. So they will keep the drama going, probably announcing some form of "extended support" to keep it alive for a while longer to prevent defection to Linux.

The XP era is ending, long live Linux.