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Do you have any idea how much Vista is going to cost?

Not really, but I suspect it will be about the same as Windows XP.

Also, do you know when they will stop supporting XP?

I believe that they officially just stopped supporting Windows 2000. However, due to backlash from driver developers, they decided to include support for Windows 2000 driver in their new Windows Driver Kit.

What Microsoft discontinuing support means for most people is that Microsoft no longer provides security patches and updates (at least not on a regular basis).

I believe that Microsoft usually does this for about 4 years after the new version comes out, but in the past I believe that those support dates have sometimes been extended due to customer demands.

You'd really need to contact Microsoft for a real answer, but I suspect they would be happy to provide you with the official date.

Microsoft tries to keep their large corporate customers from demanding that they support old versions forever though licensing contracts that allow the customers to basically pay a maintenance fee on Windows and other products, and upgrade to the latest versions whever they are ready.

It also makes it easier for Microsoft and their customers to be sure that they are running legal copies of Windows. If you've ever worked in computer support for a company that was serious about only running legal software, it can be a time consuming task to keep all those licenses strait.

Now that more and more powerful embedded computers are using X68 processors, Windows is starting to get used more and more in the embedded military market (nonessential systems in my experience). However, it often takes a long time to develop such a system and the military doesn't like hearing that they will have to change something as significant as the OS in 4 years or less from when they take delivery of the product.

They will have to pay for maintenance contracts. Unlikely in most cases. They can use a different OS. Likely in some situations, but if they want a support for a particular Linux version for that long they will have to pay someone to support it as well, and traditional embedded OSs are less feature rich (and often obscenely expensive). They can also learn to accept the fact that technology changes faster than it once did. Accessing new technology more quickly was one of the goals in moving towards COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that they will need to be doing updates to products on a shorter cycle.