View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/01/18/petition.to.save.win.xp/
Friday, Jan 18, 2008 9:05am
30,000 petition MS to "save...
An online petition conducted by InfoWorld has managed to collect over 30,000 signatures asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available, the magazine has revealed today. Called just Save XP, the petition argues that Microsoft's already extended June 30th cutoff point for sales of the 2001 operating system is still too short and that it should continue to sell "indefinitely," according to the organizers. The publication points to a lack of clear benefits to upgrading to its Windows Vista successor as well as problems with the new OS, such as slower performance in Microsoft Office tests as well as the expense of upgrading established business networks to the updated software. Regardless of where the computers are used, the limitation to Vista-only sales by July will be arbitrary, the petition maker says.

"It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice," the site adds. "For most of us, there's really no reason to move to [Vista] -- yet we don't have a choice."

Vista is further likened to the often criticized Windows Millennium Edition, which was released as a stopgap update between Windows 98 and XP but which is widely accepted as having provided little advantage over 98, prompting Microsoft to temporarily return the earlier software to market until conditions had improved.

Microsoft in 2007 is generally believed to have quickly lost momentum for its new version of Windows after its late January debut. Growth slowed after customer demand forced PC vendors such as Dell to restore an option for Windows XP to some systems. Vista was touted as having reached the 100 million-copy mark by the end of the year but ultimately accounted for just 37 percent of all PC sales in the year, indicating that XP continued to outsell its replacement.