Today, Monday, June 30, 2008, is the final day for Windows XP sales to large manufacturers from Microsoft. That means that once the inventories of machines with Windows XP held by the largest PC manufacturers, such as Dell, Hewlett Packard, and Lenovo, are depleted, that’s it, sort of.
First of all, small PC resellers will be able to sell Windows XP until January 31, 2009. They may not have the brand name recognition, but they will have legitimate Windows XP licenses for the next seven months.
In addition, there’s the option to ”downgrade” from Windows Vista to Windows XP. However, not all versions of Windows XP are eligible for the downgrade – only Vista Ultimate and Vista Business neither of which usually ship with PC’s available at retail stores. Lenovo will be selling Windows XP Recovery CD’s to allow customers to perform the downgrade
While the XP “experience” has been a particularly stable and effective operating system, Vista hasn’t enjoyed the same fondness. With a steep list of security enhancements, Vista has its place and is appreciated in many circles. However, it may be a while before the computing public has the same regard for Vista that it currently has for XP. A clear example is the circulation of a petition requesting that Microsoft continue selling Windows XP until the next version of the Windows family, Windows 7, becomes available.
Microsoft continues to tout that Vista has been on track for shipments and its adoption rate is in line with expectations.
Windows XP was launched in 2001 after the desktop operating system disappointments of Windows Me and the difficulties of Windows 2000. XP allowed small businesses to be able to extend the life of their hardware and software investments due to its stability as well as Microsoft’s inability to offer compelling reasons to upgrade. A milestone in the XP history was the release of Service Pack 2 in 2004 which tightened up XP’s security and improved many now commonly expected features such as WPA compatibility and an enhanced Windows Firewall.
