Best of the blogs: I’m doing a bit of digging out after being off late last week and don’t want to miss this one. What with Microsoft saying it will cease sales of Windows XP come June’s end, Randall Kennedy is crying out “don’t let that happen.” Instead, sign InfoWorld’s petition to save XP. “Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don’t see a need to change to Vista,” he writes. “Microsoft doesn’t have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista, or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we’ll all actually want.” Related: Even the homeless hurt by Vista updates. Notes from the field: Calling Intel’s abrupt departure from the One Laptop Per Child program “a nasty bit of business,” Cringely reflects that “there hasn’t been this much hissing and spitting in the press since Le Donald divorced Ivana.” OLPC claims that Intel tried to talk Peru’s minister of education out of its commitment to buy OLPC’s XO machines so they’d buy Intel’s own Classmate computer instead. Intel, meanwhile, says the OLPC do-gooders wanted them to stop selling the Classmate in favor of the AMD-powered XO machine. “So they took their plans for an Intel-based laptop for kids and their $12 million investment and went home,” Cringe reports in Blue rays of hope? “But this project has been plagued long before Intel got involved.” If you’re wondering about that Blu-ray reference in the headline, then yes, Cringe does get around to that spitting match, too. Related: Intel, OLPC split. Software Development