REDMOND, WA — Wonders never cease: Microsoft this week rescinded Windows XP’s death sentence after taking a public beating from users who find the operating system much preferable to its successor, Windows Vista.Instead of falling off the tech-support rails in 2011 as planned, XP will continue to receive security patches and updates until April 2014, for a total of 13 years in the support cycle — a full three years longer than any previous version of the Windows operating system.

“Our ongoing support for Windows XP is the result of our recognition that people keep their Windows-based PCs for many years,” Bill Veghte, a Microsoft vice president, wrote in a letter to customers this week.

The letter also noted the next OS update, Windows 7, is due for release in 2010.

Many consumers and large businesses have avoided upgrading from XP to Vista because of widely publicized incompatibilities between the OS and drivers and legacy software applications. In addition, both businesses and individuals have decried the expense of upgrading to Vista because of the need to upgrade hardware, as well. Some businesses and individuals have opted to buy new PCs with XP installed instead of Vista, despite Microsoft’s incessant hyping of the newer OS’s allegedly cooler, more secure features.

June 30th remains the cutoff date for selling new PCs equipped with XP; after that date, customers will be hard-pressed to find non-Vista systems on store shelves or from consultants. Dell, however, has said it has a backlog of PCs preconfigured with XP.

Volume licensees of the XP OS will be able to install XP even after the cutoff date.

There is, however, a licensing loophole that even Microsoft has begun to tout: Consumers may buy a new PC preconfigured with Vista and then “downgrade” it to a previous OS at their option. In a particularly clever invocation of the spin doctrine, Microsoft says the downgrade option is evidence of Vista’s flexibility.

According to Veghte’s letter, “It’s true that we will stop selling Windows XP as a retail-packaged product and stop licensing it directly to major PC manufacturers. But customers who still need Windows XP will be able to get it.”

Microsoft also has made an exception for manufacturers of low-cost PCS. In cases where hardware limitations make running Vista an impossibility, instead of leaving manufacturers with the sole other choice of installing an open-source version of Linux as the OS, Microsoft will allow them to install XP through June 2010.