Support for VB6 is not ending

I'll have to admit, I was personally very ignorant about the difference between mainline support and extended support, and assumed that extended support equated to sucky support. Here's the deal in a nutshell, as pointed out by Jay Roxe. The end of mainline support means that you have until March 31 to use your two free support incidents that came in the box with VB6. So if you've been saving up something really good to call Microsoft support about, now's the time.

After March 31, your free support incidents are no longer valid, and you have to pay for each support call that you make. To calculate how much this is giong to cost you, use the following worksheet:

1. # of phone support calls for VB6 made in the last year ______
2. Cost of each phone support call $245
3. Multiply lines 1 and 2 ______
4 # of web support calls for VB6 made in the last year ______
5. Cost of each web support call $195
6. Multiply lines 4 and 5 ______
7. Add lines 3 and 6 _______
8. Enter the greater of - 0 - or line 7 _____

This amount may be further reduced if you qualify under the Silicon Valley Hair Growers Relief Act of 2001. To determine if you qualify, complete worksheet 2003vs and enter the total here ______.

For example, when I fill this out, I get:

1: 0
2: $245
3: 0
4: 0
5: $195
6: 0
7: 0
8: (annual cost to me of VB6 transitioning from mainline to extended support): 0

As Jay also points out, VBRUN.dll is part of the windows XP operating system, and will be patched and supported as long as XP is, so the only thing that's switching to extended support is the IDE.