The RC2 of the final service pack of XP already has already been made available to several thousand beta testers a few weeks ago. Now, it is ready to release it out to the masses.

Redmond has pushed back the release date of XP’s final service pack several times, and is withdrawing the operating system from the market in June. Of course, it must support legacy XP software customers for many years to come, and so must patch the OS, as new vulnerabilities and bugs are uncovered. Only, not in service packs.

Will XP's official retirement encourage conservative corporates to mosey over to XP's successor, the much-lauded Vista? No, but they will upgrade in due course.