Microsoft has certainly hit the headlines recently, capped off by another hugely profitable quarter, announced this week.

Mix that in with the ongoing Yahoo-Microsoft saga and the huge European Union fine levied in February, and you’ve got a perfect Microsoft storm.

But the story that really caught my eye -- and probably is of most interest to the IT crowd -- was about Steve Ballmer and Windows XP. The Microsoft CEO was in Belgium this week, where he offered a glimmer of hope to Windows XP fans, saying the software giant may reconsider its decision to stop selling it soon.

Fans of XP have plastered the Internet with blogs, cartoons, and petitions. They loudly proclaim XP’s superiority to Vista, which was released to consumers in January to lukewarm reviews. About 160,000 people have already signed a Save XP Web petition. They want Microsoft to continue selling it until the next Windows version is released, scheduled for 2010.

It’s been a long grind for Vista. I remember in 2003, when Microsoft was coming around to companies and showing off the numerous (and labyrinthine) security features of the new operating system.

Vista had a long beta period, and we all had hopes that the new OS would not be bloated beyond belief, and that Microsoft would take extra special care to make sure it worked with things like older printers. I didn’t have much hope for either of those wishes, based on the early presentations. Sadly, neither wish came true, as we all know now.

I’m avoiding Vista for as long as I can and I applaud the save-XP efforts. After that, maybe I’ll finally take the Ubuntu plunge, as my colleague James Maguire recently did. Meanwhile, I’ll wait for 2010 to see how Microsoft will (probably) overstuff the next OS with so much bloatware that we’ll dream of the old Vista days.