Holy Crap (TM), I have to give my 2c worth here.
Firstly, I hear the shock and horror that Vista, Win7 and Win8 combined nearly don't hold a candle to the number of malware cleans on XP. What everyone appears to forget, is that XP has had a 12 year headstart.
Twelve Fucking Years
Remember that, considering XP users have been stringing it along while paying nothing. Especially when you look at the upgrade path: More money for an upgrade, training, IT support changes, possibly software upgrades/changes, for essentially, a new fangled OS that is merely a life support system for their software. - don't care about the addons, the increased capability, increased security perhaps-especially when they get their regular free Tuesday fixes on time. Paying a bucketload more money to "keep getting what we had before" is particularly unattractive.
However, Microsoft DOES care about mounting costs supplying "free" updates. Someone has to pay for those remember? And as long as it's not the ever-valued end user, who gives a crap right?
Well, after Twelve Fucking Years, and and a blunder inbetween (even if it was a sales/marketing blunder that counts and I'll never see Vista as a valid contender), being left with Win7 as their main revenue stream, they're theatening to stop updates, and release current known vulns to "encourage" the stragglers to update.
The morality or fairness of that aside, just in case you forgot: Twelve Fucking Years. In the past decades, you couldn't count how many other corporations have gone bust within the 7 year mandated support life cycle (?? at least here in OZ), let alone actually, properly supported their old products without forcing an upgrade within that time (well, making the lives of their clients difficult) - yet Microsoft is still supporting XP.
The jig is up boys and girs, seriously, suck it up and upgrade, you've had an exceptionally good run, scratch a notch on your keyboard and be done with it. Time to move on. Sheeze.