If Microsoft had held to its original plans, Windows XP would be a memory now as the move to Vista would have been completed by the software giant. The overall disdain for Vista in the market by many computer users and the fact that Vista was such a resource hog meant the new OS just didn’t work well on the new and massively popular netbook computers.

Microsoft began letting netbook makers use XP Home on their netbooks and the stay of execution made XP Home the defacto winner in the netbook market. This directly led to Microsoft postponing the retirement of XP earlier this year. Microsoft has now announced that it will again postpone the retirement of Windows XP.

CRN reports that Microsoft has extended the XP Home retirement party until January 31, 2009 and allows distributors to take delivery of those orders through May 30th. It isn’t much of a stretch to image that shortly after May is when we will see Windows 7 debut, which is said to be much more netbook friendly. Asus has already announced that it will offer Windows 7 on netbooks by mid-2009, right around the May timeframe. Microsoft still maintains that Windows 7 may not be available until 2010.

Via CRN