XP is on its way out. As for now the June 30 deadline is valid. Which means Vista is here to stay. HP, Dell and Lenovo have all said they will downgrade operating systems on new machines from Vista to XP at customer request and will continue to do so until 2009. If you are buying a new computer and want XP ask for it. Of course all this is moot if Microsoft backs down and gives XP an extension.
Will you be forced to upgrade? Not really. But new software might work better with Vista. So in time it would be hard not to upgrade to Vista.
Can you run both Vista and XP on the same computer? Yes, if you are feeling brave you can partition and run both.
As for me I really dont see why anyone would want to stay with XP. At least try Vista. I have - and never looked back.
