On 22.10.2013 21:41, Andrey Semashev wrote:
XP is still quite widely used, but its popularity is declining and many new applications don't target it anymore. Really? Well, to my knowledge latest Visual Studio and MS Office don't support XP (as the hosting OS). It's Microsoft's business. The latest Visual Studio requires Windows 8.1 if you want to compile the WinRT application.
As well as recent games Many new games require modern computers anyway. For owners of these computers, dropping the WinXP support is not a problem because they usually use Win7+.
and some other applications I happen to interact with. And the site you referred to shows the decline. There any many users of Windows XP. For them, the Windows XP Lifecycle ends at 08 Apr 2014. I see no reason to introduce any problems with WinXP compatibility before this date. On the other hand, I see no reasons to keep WinXP supported by default after it's official death.
-- Sergey Cheban