Announcing the end game, Stephen Rose, Microsoft's senior community manager, said that the operating system - which is now 10 years old - has had an amazing run and millions of PC users are grateful for it.
"But it's time to move on. Two reasons: 1) Extended support for Windows XP is running out in less than 1000 days, and 2) there's an OS out there that’s much better than Windows XP", he said in a blog posting.
"On April 8, 2014, security patches and hotfixes for all versions of Windows XP will no longer be available. So bottom line, PC's running Windows XP will be vulnerable to security threats", he added.
And it gets darker - Rose noted that many third party software providers are not planning to extend support for their applications running on Windows XP, "which translates to even more complexity, security risks, and ultimately, added management costs for your IT department if you're still managing Windows XP environments."
This information conflicts a little with discussions that Infosecurity has had with a number of software vendors in the last year or so, many of whom have said they plan to continue support until the user base becomes non-viable.
There are also question marks over tablet computers, many of which run under Windows XP, and the San Francisco Chronicle has a story entitled `Why Microsoft Won't Make Windows Phone 7 Work On Tablets.'
But back with Rose and his blog, where he urges users to "act quickly because time is limited, and organisations that have not started deployment or in the early phases of the project need to accelerate."
"According to a recent Garter report `more than 50% of organisations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early 2012 will not complete their deployments before Windows XP support ends, and will incur increased support costs", he asserts.
The Register newswire is less than enthusiastic about Rose's comments, noting that "unsurprisingly, Rose took the opportunity to big up Windows 7, which Microsoft's Steve Ballmer separately announced yesterday had now reached 400 million licence sales worldwide since its retail release in October 2009."
Internet user response to the news has been negative. On Rose's blog, one regular poster - 7flavor - pointed out that 1,000 days is almost 3 years.
"3 years is a long time. I will upgrade all my PCs from XP 32-bit and XP x64 to the version of Windows that comes out in 2015 following Windows 8 and that too out of compulsion and because XP won't receive any security updates", s/he said.
"I am familiar with Windows 7 and Vista and always have W7 on one PC to keep a check on things and I don't like many many things about it", s/he added.
"Especially the taskbar, Start menu, Windows Explorer, and the servicing model. It also has several audio limitations like no hardware acceleration, no simultaneous output to devices and no compatibility with my MIDI synths."