Seems like Bill Gates got out at just the right time.

Unless you, like me, are a bit of a geek, you'll be unlikely to have seen the news recently that Microsoft have stopped PC manufacturers from selling Windows XP. This was always on the cards - indeed, the original plan was to stop XP sales by the end of January, and it was only when customers complained loudly that the date was extended until the end of June.

Despite not having actually reached that date yet, a lot of manufacturers have already stopped selling XP. I wandered into my local PC World yesterday (I'm probably going to get a new desktop pretty soon – my poor little laptop is coughing and wheezing more than ever just at the moment) to see what the situation was, and the girl on the customer support desk – who, to make a completely irrelevant observation, was extremely attractive – informed me that the only way they could give me a PC with Windows XP on it would be to sell me a Vista PC, then take Vista off it and "upgrade" it to XP.

I'd heard of this trick before, but on being informed that I'd have to pay the cost of Vista, the cost of XP, and an extra fee for switching between the two, I decided that this really wasn't an option. No matter how pretty their customer support reps may be, PC World are going to have a hard time selling me a system with a massive markup on it just because I want an older piece of software.

The really unfortunate part of the whole issue is that the people who get hurt most by this are the retailers, like PC World. Microsoft itself might take a small hit in sales, but its business customers will probably make up for that for the most part. The retailers, though, are going to have quite a few people like me simply turning away and either going online to the few places that do still have stock of XP, or going away from Windows altogether into the arms of Apple or Linux.

Personally, I'm going to try the online route, but the idea was always to switch to Linux as my primary OS. Wine has now reached version 1.1, so it's possible that I can get away without using Windows at all. And if I – a technically literate person, but no technical genius – can realise that, then so can the very many other people like me, and Microsoft are going to see a fall in their market share. It seems like Microsoft are increasingly determined to shoot themselves not only in their foot, but in the feet of anyone who comes anywhere near them.