October 22, 2010 is the day that the OEM’s will have to stop shipping Windows XP on new Netbooks. Everyone knew that this day would come and last year many were worried about having to move to Windows 7. But were those fears justified?

The source of those fears can be found in Microsoft’s most inept operating systems ever –Windows Vista. In the car world, Vista would be a fuel guzzling, lumbering and somewhat good looking vehicle. It would get you from place to place… eventually. XP was the slightly older Toyota model which was, in retrospect, a decently designed car. It did everything you wanted to, even if it did break down a few times or was prone to break-ins.

Windows 7 could have been Vista all over again but, fortunately for all of us, Microsoft got it right and designed an operating system that was actually efficient and better than XP. It was so good that it ran on older PC’s quite well. Compare this to Vista which lumbers on no matter what high-spec system you put it on. It’s the efficiency of Windows 7 that has seen it emerge as a winner in the Netbook market. It’s also that efficiency that will see users not fuss too much about XP passing on. In fact the operating system has turned out to be so good that many users are running Windows 7 Ultimate on their Netbooks instead of the Home or Home Premium versions.

So it seems safe to bid adieu to Windows XP, an OS that kept us company in the dark times of an inept OS. If you are still running Windows, for some reason or other, please remember that support for Service Pack 2 ends in July. You are advised to upgrade to Service Pack 3 and subscribe to extended support, which will keep you secure till 2014.