San Francisco - Today, we bid adieu to Windows XP. Despite an outpouring of demand -- including more than 210,000 people who signed InfoWorld's , Microsoft held firm and yesterday discontinued sales of XP in most cases.

Sure, any copies of XP in use will continue to run, so the venerable operating system isn't leaving us entirely. And enterprises, small businesses, and some consumers will still be able to to Windows Vista Business or Ultimate. And until Feb. 1, 2009, system builders will be able to install XP on "white box" PCs they assemble, which also ironically includes Apple Macs that are bundled with Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion by resellers such as MacMall and CDW. Finally, such as the Asus Eee PC can ship with Windows XP until 2010.

But it is the end of an era nonetheless.

[ Canyour PC run Windows 7 when it ships in early 2010? Find out with the InfoWorld Windows Sentinel tool's new . ]

In response to XP's passing, several InfoWorld editors and contributors shared their memories of XP. We encourage you to in our comments section.

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