Microsoft is certainly putting the Windows faithful to another testing. Vista was an excruciating trial; but now this [see screenshot below]. More than 50% of Windows users are on Windows XP and Redmond is ignoring if not insulting them.
Now Redmond insists that the issue is that hardware acceleration for IE9 browser is unavailable on Windows XP; but all 4 other browser vendors run in Windows XP,use hardware acceleration of graphics, and provide much better Web Standards support including HTML5. Hmmm … seems Windows users are being short-sticked again.
Update:IE users have an excellent replacement on Windows XP Google Chrome Frame.
It would be simpler to just download the Google Chrome browser; but some users may not be able to do so because of a organizational standard based on using IE. What Chrome Frame allows users to do is add an IE plugin called Chrome Frame which replaces the IE engine with the Chrome one. This guarantees that users will be able to get HTML5 , better Web standards support, and faster response time on IE6, IE7, and IE8. The latest news is that Google is upping the support for Chrome Frame given the release of IE9 and its lack of full HTML5 and W3C Web standards support along with the persistence of IE6 as the most popular IE browser. See here for details on the quick install.