I'd disagree. One of the major complaints about windows is bloat, not unsuported hardware. You've got to draw a line somewhere and say you're not supporting old hardware. If windows XP was an operating system renowned for it's ability to turn any ten year old PC into a great router, then it'd be a gross oversight. Seeing as it's a desktop OS for modern computers, not supporting hardware that's 10 years old isn't a bad decision if it can lead to more time being spent on improving the OS' stability or even just gauranteeing that installing a network card will be plug-n-play.

Matthew