Steve Balmer’s comments on Windows XP’s availability beyond June 30, made during a press conference held in Europe got us all wondering: is Microsoft really considering that, based on users’ wishes?

A spokesperson for the company however said there will be no change in Microsoft’s plans regarding the deadline:

“Our plan for Windows XP availability is unchanged. We’re confident that’s the right thing to do based on the feedback we’ve heard from our customers and partners.”

That comes a bit in contradiction with what Ballmer said in Europe: “XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

The company’s statements continue to praise Windows Vista as the preferred OS for users now, which means users have no reason to ask for XP to keep on living, but why is it then that Ballmer believes some customers might think otherwise?

Maybe because there is still a lot of work to do with Windows Vista, after all, Ballmer himself told Vista is still “a work in progress.” However, he also said it is “bigger than XP”, so future should be bright enough for Vista, while XP quietly dies.

Many analysts have criticized Microsoft for its approach on Vista, and ever since its launch in January 2007, there’s been a lot of talks about how Vista failed to meet customer demands and expectations.

This week Microsoft began distributing Windows Vista SP1 automatically to users, which means no new features, but an improved experience and fixes based on customer feedback.

Windows Vista has already made it onto 100 million customers’ computers, and the company says things will continue to get better.

Windows XP is not dead yet, as Microsoft also unveiled this week the availability of the delayed XP Service Pack 3 update for MSDN/TechNet users, despite initial announcement that Vista SP1 has priority in front of XP.