06/21/2008, 7:15pm, EDT
Saturday, June 21stDell extends XP sales "by popular demand"
Dell today issued a last-minute stay on its XP cut-off date and has posted notice that it will continue selling some of its systems with the older Windows operating system until June 26th at 7AM Eastern, or four days before Microsoft's mandatory date for switching most computers to Vista. The extension applies to three variants of the Inspiron 530 desktop that start from $549; a special version of the XPS 630 gaming system also comes with Vista Ultimate but makes XP Professional the default installation.
As promised, Dell will also continue to make the XPS 630's downgrade option available after June 26th along with similar options on the XPS 720 H2C and the XPS M1730 notebook. All of Dell's business lines already require the downgrade choice for users who would prefer not to use Vista.
The unusually short extension isn't explained by Dell beyond the popularity level but points to continuing resistance to Vista among home users, who are less likely than corporate buyers to be affected by backwards compatibility issues but have in the past raised concerns over software driver support as well as relative performance for both budget and gaming systems.
Filed under: computers, industry
Other story tags: Microsoft, Dell, Vista, Inspiron, XPS
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Ridiculous
This is getting absolutely ridiculous. It's time to upgrade to Windows Vista. Those of you still on XP are a joke. I wish Microsoft would kill it off completely and forbid OEM's from installing/distributing it and/or allowing downgrades.
Really?
Why is it that Steve Ballmer made a big deal at an event on June 4th about how you can buy Vista and then downgrade it to XP for free? Sounds almost like there's little faith in their own product...
Additionally, InformationWeek points out that this raises questions about sales figures for Vista. In April Microsoft said is sold more than 140 million Vista licenses since the OS became available, yet they have not said what percentage of those licenses have been downgraded to XP.
Apparently, a few left
Dell is not being benevolent. They have a few XP machines that they need to clear out, and so they will continue "extending" their deadline until they are all sold. They can't afford to do otherwise!
Vista still sucks
Fortunately our university is not deploying Vista this summer with new machines. Unfortunately, I'll have it on the new work machine I'm getting in a couple weeks.
Vista is an ugly piece of shit which has been a dud in the marketplace. M$ keeps trying to shove it down people's throats anyway.
MS and Apple
What's the old saying:
With Apple, people expect absolute perfection.
With MS, people expect something slightly less annoying.
With Vista, MS appears to not have even hit that low expectation. I've used Vista for about a year now, and it's really annoying having Firefox crash all of the time.
re: Ridiculous
Guest wrote: This is getting absolutely ridiculous. It's time to upgrade to Windows Vista. ...
... Not so fast, not according to my local PC store. They don't sell Dells. On their sign at their location, they have this telling phrase:
"We have XP"
They are providing XP because their customers are demanding XP. Selling what the customer wants (Windows XP) gives them a competitive advantage.
It's over...
... Microsoft is dead, sell the stock!