Redmond (WA) - With the launch of Windows Vista being less than one week away, Microsoft today announced the extended support timeframe for Windows XP Home and XP Media Center Edition.

As Windows XP Professional, both operating system versions will get a total of five years of mainstream support until April 2009, plus five years of extended support until 2014, according to a statement released by the company today.

Mainstream support is offered by Microsoft typically for a minimum of five years from the date of a product’s general availability or two years after a succeeding version of the product is released. Extended support includes paid per-incident-support, free security update support and contracted hotfix support.