Dell, HP keeping Windows XP alive

• IBTimes RSS
• Print
• E-Mail
• digg
• Del.icio.us

Taking advantage of the "downgrade rights" offered as part of the Windows Vista license agreement, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell have both planned to offer machines loaded with XP well beyond June.

The plan is that technically the computers will be Vista Business or Vista Ultimate machines that have been factory "downgraded" to XP at the customer's request. More-or-less they are XP machines that come with an already paid-for upgrade to Vista when and if the customer chooses to do so.

HP said that it plans to continue selling the "pre-downgraded" desktops, notebooks, and workstations to its business customers at-least until July 30, 2009. Dell has already announced the same option on its web site and has promised that the models will stick around long after it stops taking standard XP orders on June 18. Other computer makers are still exploring their course-of-action but also want to sell XP beyond June 30.

However, there are certain limits to the approach being taken by HP and Dell. Only the Business and Ultimate versions of Vista come with downgrade rights which imply that regular consumer machines can't be sold in a similar fashion.

While companies can offer pre-downgraded machines via their web sites, buying a PC at retail stores would become rather complicated. It may be possible for customers to buy such a machine but how stores can offer such an option is not clear. The point to be noted is that in order to stay within Microsoft's terms, the customer has to somehow "request" the XP downgrade.

Kevin Kutz, a director in Microsoft's Windows unit, said that the downgrade-rights option meets customer needs.

"While (computer makers) continue to see large numbers of customers making the transition to Windows Vista, there are some pockets, like small business, that need a little more time. And from what we've heard from our partners, the downgrade rights option fulfills that need," Kutz said in a statement.

"XP will hit an end-of-life," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in Belgium recently. "We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments."

And yet all of this prompts to the real question - why Microsoft will not just extend the deadline- The company's basis that customers and computer makers are not demanding a longer life for XP seems to be increasingly questionable.

• 1
• 2
• 3