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The most popular operating system of all time retires June 30th 2008

xp_gone 

Well we are just 10 days away before Microsoft pull the plug on the OEM and Retail availability of Windows XP.

It would appear some OEM’s like Dell will still be able to ship “XP Downgrades” for a little while longer.

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This of course is only on selected machines in their range. Typically the business ones.

However even this can’t go on forever, or can it?

All that is needed is the hardware vendors keep making drivers for XP.

Corporate’s are in no rush to go Windows Vista.

So once again the Windows OS forks off in two directions.

Consumers = Vista

Business = XP

Pretty much like Windows98 and NT 4.0 of 10 years ago.

Buying?

Tip: For business users if you are buying new hardware with Windows Vista make sure you get either Windows Vista Business or Ultimate as both can legally be downgraded to Windows XP Pro and in addition check that XP drivers are available. This way if you have to downgrade you can.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 9:26 am and is filed under Blog Entries, Microsoft, Tech Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The most popular operating system of all time retires June 30th 2008”

  1. Gary F Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Asus have announced their £220 inc vat Eee desktop PC will be launched around August and will come with Windows XP installed as standard. I don’t think Microsoft will prevent manufacturers from licensing XP if there is still clearly demand for it, as this demonstrates.

    XP is much easier to use, straight forward, faster, very reliable, works with older software, and doesn’t demand as much RAM/CPU/GPU resource.

    BTW, the Eee desktop could make a nice alternative to a cheap Vostro.

    And I haven’t even mentioned Windows 7. ;-)

  2. Colin DiPonio Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Hi Gary

    Yes thats a good point. Microsoft seems to be happy to sell it to the OEM’s doing these entry level devices.

    So how real is the June 30th cut off.

    Colin

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