Leave it to Microsoft to get its priorities straight. Currently, the Redmond company is its main competitor on the operating system market. This situation is fueled not only by the concomitant availability of Windows XP and Windows Vista, but also by the consistent level of demand for both products. An illustrative example of the fact that Windows XP has successfully survived the consumer launch of Vista is the fact that Microsoft had to succumb to pressure from both end users and original equipment manufacturers, and to keep offering the operating system via the retail and OEM channel, until mid 2008. This despite the fact that retail and OEM availability for XP was planned to end at the beginning of February 2008.

At this point in time, while working on both the first service pack for Vista and the third and final service pack for XP, Microsoft has managed to push the first into the limelight and to slip the latter into Vista SP1's shadow. Recently, the company has made public the official Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3. And in a overview that is supposedly focused on XP SP3, Microsoft still put in a few references to Windows Vista.

"Windows Vista provides the most advanced security and management capability, but for PCs that cannot be upgraded to Windows Vista right now, Windows XP SP3 ensures these PCs have all available updates and allows these PCs to leverage some new Windows Server 2008 capabilities, such as Network Access Protection (NAP)", reads an excerpt of the whitepaper.

And just to clear up any confusion that the delivery of SP3 would make XP an equivalent of Windows Vista, the Redmond company downplayed the relevance of the service pack altogether. "Microsoft is not adding significant functionality from newer versions of Windows, such as Windows Vista, to Windows XP through XP SP3", reveals another fragment of the overview.