BEANCOUNTERS working for Gartner and Burton Group have issued an open warning to Microsoft to keep Windows XP available at least until 2009.

Currently, the Vole plans to switch off the life support on XP in June even though the patient is not dead and is probably getting better.

Burton Group service director Richard Jones told Infoworld that in any operating system transition, you need to have the original and new products running side by side for a couple of years.This gives punters a chance to do a decent migration. The Vole, however, initially told punters that they would have 11 months to fiddle and tweak before extending the deadline by another six months. This 17 months is still far too short a time, Jones said.

Gartner's Michael Silver said it would be wise for XP to be available until the end of 2008 because of the two-year rule.

Jones added that the Vole had been a little too aggressive because it took too long to release Vista and this deprived it of cash. However, it was making users pay for its mistake, he said.

Ovum analyst Dwight Davis added that it would not surprise him if Microsoft backed away from its June 30 cut-off date for XP if a sizable number of XP customers continue to complain.

There was a chance that Microsoft would see customers abandoning Windows rather than being forced to move to Vista.