Re: "Adding to the bottom line"
Windows XP RTM was released generally in October 2001. As part of the NT5 family, it was a sort-of-enhancement of Windows 2000. Microsoft promoted XP RTM as a replacement for Windows 98 on consumer PCs (the application compatibility team had done a lot of work on games) and as an enterprise OS.
XP's launch was unfortunate. Shortly afterwards, serious remote exploit vulnerabilities were exposed (for Windows 2000, too). Microsoft launched a code improvement programme for Windows.
XP Service Pack 2 was released in August 2004. It was based on Microsoft's code improvement programme and, owing to the volume of code and feature change, should be appreciated as a new version. The jump from Windows 2000 to XP was much smaller than from Windows XP to XP SP2.
The XP boxes out there run XP SP2 or SP3 (April 2008). Desist proclaiming that XP is 16 years old.
"If businesses still needed to run XP software (as a stop-gap until application upgrade), Microsoft provided downloadable XP emulation support in proper versions of Windows 7."
XP Mode in Windows 7 was a great idea and the product was an unmanageable bag of excrement. Hey -- everyone is local administrator!
"All Windows Server 2003 instances should have been replace years ago"
All dot net framework designs should permit updates client and server side. Old clients should work with old servers, and vice versa. That is the ideal. Or cobblers in the world where we can't patch because we don't have source code.
Just apply an escrow agreement when you buy proprietary software; the source code exists and customers can use it when the original writer is gone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
