I totally agree. It would really make more sense if they put their effort and resources into releasing IE 9 or why not 10 for Windows XP [1]. I assume this would really eliminate the purpose of testing to those older IEs.
I rarely open IE 10 for testing, anyway. I assume if my website does work on latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari it will work also on recent Internet Explorers ( >= 10 ). If it doesn't work as expected, it's MS bug of a browser that users can actually upgrade, so it's not such a big deal.
I suspect as we approach 2015, the remaining users of XP & IE9 (or earlier) are mostly in the "doesn't update software" camp, more so than the "can't upgrade IE" camp.
I rarely open IE 10 for testing, anyway. I assume if my website does work on latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari it will work also on recent Internet Explorers ( >= 10 ). If it doesn't work as expected, it's MS bug of a browser that users can actually upgrade, so it's not such a big deal.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_versions#Wind...