The Redmond Company has announced that is has introduced two of its current operating system editions into the Extended Support phase. In this context, Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition have had their lifecycles extended by a total of five years, on top of the original support period of the two products. "Today, Microsoft is announcing the addition of an Extended Support phase for the Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition operating systems, providing consumers with an additional phase of support," revealed Microsoft.

Microsoft revealed that it will deliver additional support for XP Home Edition and XP Media Center Edition until April 2014. "With the addition of Extended Support, the support life cycle for Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition will include a total of five years of Mainstream Support (until April 2009) and five years of Extended Support, matching the support policy provided for Windows XP Professional. The Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy standardizes Microsoft product support policies for business and developer products as well as for consumer, hardware, multimedia and Microsoft Dynamics products," added Microsoft.

With the added support for XP Home and Media Center, Microsoft has marked a precedent, as this is the first time that the Redmond juggernaut introduces software products into the Extended Support phase for consumers. Windows XP Professional already had policies support that extended beyond 2009. In this regard, Microsoft will offer support for Windows XP for a total of over 12 years, as the operating system was launched in October 2001 and will expire in April 2014.