Do UMPCs mean a reprieve for XP?

The approaching forced retirement of Windows XP is a hot topic – see "Windows XP: Going, going ... gone?" But since I wrote that article, developments make me wonder if Microsoft is going to be able to kill off XP.

Two weeks ago Asus announced it expects the new version of its wildly popular Eee ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) with Windows XP Home installed will sell 3 million units this year. Last week Intel rose to the bait and publicly changed its mind about selling its Classmate UMPC in the United States and Europe.

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation is also working with Microsoft to develop a slimmed-down XP to run on its XO laptop. I've been trying out the Everex Cloudbook, an ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) that falls into the same category as the as the Asus Eee and the One Laptop Per Child XO, and I wasn't surprised last week when in the course of an email exchange about the Cloudbook somebody from Everex asked me how I thought the market would react to XP on UMPCs. The Cloudbook, like the XO and the original Eee, runs Linux, but the pressure for Windows seems irresistable.

It's easy to see why Intel would change its mind. The chipmaker was all altruism when it announced the Classmate as a low-cost notebook for schoolchildren in poor countries – though perhaps the fact that the XO didn't run an Intel processor or a Microsoft operating system made the project seem a whole lot less altruistic.

Now along comes the Eee, selling by the millions with a VIA processor installed. And Intel, which had no plans to sell the Classmate in developed countries as recently as January, when I talked to a manager for the Classmate program at CES. But perhaps that was just because Intel didn't (a) have a processor product that fit the category (a problem the new Atom line fixes) and (b) didn't see a market – something the Eee has surely changed its mind about.

The most interesting question now is, what does Microsoft do? These tiny machines all require an operating system a lot less demanding than Windows Vista. But beginning June 30 PC makers are currently expected to stop shipping machines with XP installed. About all Microsoft will have on its shelves to sell is Vista.

The software giant must have given Asus some assurances that make the Taiwanese PC maker believe it can sell XP Home on its bigger, more expensive Eee PCs the rest of this year. And Everex wouldn't be asking about XP if it thought the OS was going away.

But there's a great spectator sport to be had here: How will Microsoft save face while making what looks like an inevitable reversal to keep Windows XP on sale?

There may be some wiggle room in XP Service Pack 3. In the past, Microsoft has supported new service packs for two years or the lifespan of the product the service pack updates, whichever comes first. The company could decide to edit out the "whichever comes first" and give XP SP 3 its allotted two-year span not only of support, but of sales – even though sales and support lifecycles have historically had nothing to do with each other.

Or we could see an entirely new edition of Windows that would basically be a relabeling of XP Home updated with some of Vista's user interface. "Windows Mobile" is already taken, but maybe they could call it "Windows Ultra (Mobile PC)."

Whatever happens, you can bet we'll see Microsoft respond to the current proliferation of extremely popular little computers running Linux. Even if it means the software giant has to grit its teeth and issue an eleventh-hour reprieve for XP.