Yeah! I kind of wonder what mixture Mixture is smokin' (I'd like some too!) And make no mistake, as far as Microsoft goes it is all about money - a huge percentage of their revenue comes from Windows and Office, and they have not been too successful in creating new revenue streams.
But I agree with SD - the dwindle rate for XP is going to be far slower than any previous MS OS - simply because they were so successful and sold so many copies of it.
And there are some practical implications as well - for example, I have a couple of Asus Netbooks running XP Home which I take to meetings. They are small and light and run all the productivity software I need. There's no way they will run any later OS's - and why should I throw away a device which still does what I need it to (and gives me up to 5 hours battery life)?
Even it was possible, to update the software would cost me far more than the machines cost me in the first place. I also have a tablet - but even though it gives me more than 10 hours battery life, it tends to stay at home because I simply haven't been able to find productivity software that comes anywhere near what I have running on XP.
And just a BTW for Zeppelin - Once upon a time, Toshiba made very good notebooks indeed: I still have a Toshiba T1000 Notebook from the early 80's - Boots from into DOS from a 720Kb stiffy, 1Mb memory, mono character based screen (80 columns X 25 lines). Popped in some new ni-cads - and it still works! So go forth with hope in your heart!