Today, more than 1 billion personal computers around the world run Windows. Over the years, Windows has been the catalyst for innovations that have transformed the way people communicate, access information, create and share content, and much more, at work and at home. Windows is the platform that most people use to get the greatest value and benefit from their personal computers. Windows is also the platform that brings together the broadest array of choices across PCs, devices and applications. To all of our Windows customers, thank you! To the hundreds of thousands of partners that develop millions of solutions for Windows, thank you.

Read the rest of the letter at microsoft.com.

CEO Steve Ballmer has a unique sales pitch for the company’s Windows Vista operating system — if you don’t like it, you can turn it into Windows XP.

Referring to Microsoft licensing policies that allow customers who purchase an operating system to legally install predecessor versions on their PCs, Ballmer noted that the program allows customers who aren’t satisfied with Vista to use XP.

“Customers get both,” said Ballmer, during a brief interview at an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Ballmer was responding to a question about whether Microsoft would extend Window’s XP’s shelf life beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration for the broader PC market. The company earlier this week said it would give XP a reprieve for installations on ultra-low cost desktops.

Ballmer implied that an extension for mainstream PCs isn’t in the cards because customers who want XP past June 30 can simply purchase Vista and exercise the downgrade option. “I don’t know how you can do better than getting both,” he said.

A number of PC makers, including Dell, are offering business systems that have been “pre-downgraded” from Vista to XP.

Ballmer’s comments indicate that Microsoft does not view the downgrade program as a mere licensing loophole through which a few disgruntled customers can retain access to Windows XP. Rather, it appears that the company is now formally endorsing the program and may in fact be counting on it to spur sales of Vista, which many businesses have rejected due to its hefty hardware requirements and incompatibilities with older applications.

The situation raises questions about sales figures that Microsoft has provided for Vista. In April, the company said it had sold more than 140 million Vista licenses since the OS became available to the public early last year. But Microsoft did not indicate what percentage of those Vista licenses have been downgraded to XP.

A number of organizations in the government and commercial markets have said they may bypass Vista and jump directly from XP to Windows 7 when the latter becomes available in late 2009 or early 2010.

Nice fading transitions and help titles when hovering makes this a killer add-on for XP or Vista (Mac user’s obviously doesn’t need this one…).

Here’s how it looks on my Win XP SP2 office PC:

Grab the code from Lora Devrexter’s homepage and try it for yourself. Download link on the right-side menu, or download it here.

For customers who use Windows XP at home, Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer.

Windows XP SP3 combines all previously released performance, security, and stability updates. It also provides a limited number of new and enhanced functionalities (including NAP), although it does not significantly change the Windows XP experience or bring most Windows Vista functionality to Windows XP.

The goals of Windows XP SP3 are to:

• Provide a new baseline for customers still deploying Windows XP, to help them avoid the inconvenience of applying individual updates.
• Fill gaps in the updates users might have missed by declining individual updates when using Automatic Updates, and to deliver updates not made available through Windows Update.

For more information about Windows XP SP3, go to Windows XP Service Packs or see Windows XP Service Pack 3 Overview.

Update: XP SP3 is finally available for download. [ link ]