Windows XP Home will continue to have Mainstream support for two years after its successor version, Windows Vista, is released. The announcement marks an update to Microsoft's support life cycle for consumer products and resolves a potential problem for millions of Windows XP Home users who were facing the prospect of a costly 2006 upgrade, such as the purchase of a new computer, in order to run a computer with a secure OS.

The change—Microsoft says it is a change in how Microsoft has communicated its life-cycle policy, rather than a change to the policy itself—was prompted by lengthy delays in releasing Windows XP's successor, Windows Vista. Originally scheduled to ship in 2004, Vista is now scheduled to ship at the end of 2006. That is just when Windows XP Home was scheduled to exit its five-year period of Mainstream support, during which Microsoft provides critical security updates: Microsoft's support life-cycle Web site gave the expiration date for Windows XP Home support as Dec. 31, 2006. The entry for Windows XP Professional, in contrast, followed Microsoft's published rules for business software and said that support would continue for two years after the release of Windows Vista, the successor version, which is likely to keep Windows XP Professional in Mainstream support until 2009.

The end of Mainstream support would have left Windows XP Home users with some difficult choices:

• Continue using Windows XP Home and hope that Microsoft would ship security updates despite the end of support
• Upgrade to Windows XP Professional for about US$200
• Upgrade to Vista, which for many users would require a PC hardware upgrade as well
• Purchase an entirely new PC preloaded with Vista.

Microsoft now says that, in spite of what its life-cycle support documents said, consumer products such as Windows XP Home are also covered by the two-year buffer. The company has begun to change its Web pages to reflect the application of the policy to Windows XP Home, which will give consumers two more years to migrate to a new system or OS.

The Microsoft support life-cycle policy is outlined at support.microsoft.com/lifecycle and linked pages.