After 10 Years, Why Windows XP Won't Go Away

With Windows XP, the most obvious unique factor is Microsoft's botched launch of Windows Vista, XP's would-be replacement. Microsoft released it in January 2007 only after repeated delays, but the software still had an unfinished feel. People who installed Vista on PCs that had come with Windows XP often found that it was unbearably sluggish and flaky. Actually, even people who bought brand-new computers with the new operating system preinstalled often had trouble with it. Many of them went back to XP; many more who never bought Vista in the first place decided not to go there.
Eventually, Microsoft patched up Vista enough that it worked better, but the software's reputation was already fatally damaged. And even if Vista had worked
better from the get-go, it might have had a tough time dislodging XP from the world's PCs. As its tagline "The wow starts now" suggests, it focused on glitz, like the transparent windows of its fancy new Aero user interface. Meanwhile, many basic problems with XP went unfixed.
By rejecting Vista, consumers and businesses told Microsoft they didn't want their operating system to wow them. They just wanted it to recede into the background, allowing them to get work done with a minimum of surprises. Windows 7 does that better than XP or Vista ever did. But by the time it debuted in 2009, people had discovered that it was possible to just keep on using Windows XP.
That represented a dramatic change in public opinion: back in 1995, PC owners had queued up at CompUSA at midnight to buy Windows 95, like modern-day Apple fans clamoring for a new iPhone. In the post-Vista era, plenty of perfectly intelligent Windows users concluded that good enough was good enough.