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The past week has been a momentous one. Co-founder Bill Gates
officially retired. A few days later, Windows XP was retired.
Officially, Monday, June 30 was the last day you could get Windows XP. Kinda,
sorta, maybe well, not really.
It's true that XP will no longer be sold by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to PC OEMs,
but those parties can still continue to sell off their existing inventory.
Additionally, Microsoft has left a lot of loopholes that will enable those who
really want to get XP to do so for quite a while yet.
For example, so-called "system builders" typically smaller firms that
custom build PCs for clients“ will still be able to purchase copies of XP until
January 31, 2009. In addition, the large PC OEMs like HP and Dell will continue
to offer customers the ability to buy new PCs with Windows Vista and have them
"downgraded" to run XP instead however, it costs the same as high-end versions
of Vista.
That means that, despite all the tears shed over XP's lingering demise, the
aging operating system is well entrenched with customers and will be available
in one way or another for at least another two years and so, to some extent, it
will continue to compete with Vista.
Whatever customers do, however, Microsoft says that long-term support for XP is
not an issue.
"We recently released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP and we will continue to
provide security updates and other critical updates for Windows XP until April,
2014 [as part of Microsoft's extended support]. Our ongoing support for Windows
XP is the result of our recognition that people keep their Windows-based PCs for
many years," Bill Veghte, senior vice president for Windows and Online Business
at Microsoft said in an open letter posted online and sent to customers last
week.
Even though Microsoft might love to kill off XP, it keeps stumbling upon market
opportunities where it just can't resist the tug of a dollar to be made.
Indeed, this spring Microsoft shipped XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) – reputedly the
last service pack for the seven-year-old system. Also this spring, the company
announced it will provide versions of XP Home for PC OEMs to offer on what have
come to be referred to as ultra low-cost PCs or ULCPCs, which includes the One
Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.
"All OEMs, including major OEMs, have this option," Veghte said.
That means, XP may be available in the marketplace for a long time yet, as
consumers and businesses buy ULCPCs as mobile devices or as less expensive
clients on networks. Those devices, which Microsoft now terms NetTops (ultra
low-cost desktops) and NetBooks (ultra low-cost notebooks) rather than the
ungainly and confusing ULCPC moniker, will be available with XP until June 30,
2010.
Because the cutoff date has been a moving target, though, many analysts believe
that date could shift further, especially if Windows 7 is late – a relatively
common occurrence for Microsoft system releases.
Driving most of the interest in keeping XP alive and available are corporate IT
departments, some of which are thinking seriously of skipping Vista (even after
the release of Vista SP1 this spring) and waiting until the next version of
Windows, codenamed Windows 7, ships. That date is currently planned for late
next year or early 2010 – approximately three years after Vista first shipped,
the company has said repeatedly.
Still, many analysts recommend that users not skip Vista to wait for Windows 7.
"You're probably better off running something [Vista] that is at least still in
the main focus of the company," Michael Cherry, lead analyst for operating
systems at Directions on Microsoft,
In fact, XP's age is a liability for customers, say many analysts.
"If you really want XP, you'll be able to get it for a while," Roger Kay,
president of Endpoint Technologies, That may not be the case, though, for
third-party device drivers, especially as Microsoft works harder to phase out
XP.
"On new hardware there will be some situations, particularly graphics boards,
where there won't be drivers for XP," Kay said.
XP support another issue
Another problem waiting in the wings is the end of mainstream support for XP.
"Customers will receive mainstream support for Windows XP until April 2009," a
Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mail to
A Microsoft spokesperson said that a customer buying XP today would get roughly
nine months of mainstream support before April 2009, and five years of extended
support.
While extended support is available until 2014, that is more maintenance and
security patches than anything else. Typically, Microsoft extends support after
it issues a full service pack, but "you're not likely to get another XP service
pack," Cherry said.*
One major complaint among both home and corporate users is that, in its quest to
bolster Windows' security – a lack of which it had been severely criticized
for earlier this decade – it went perhaps too far. Administrators and users
complain loudly, even today, about how intrusive the security prompts are.
Another of Vista's problems has been that it hasn't been able to live up to its
advance hype, even now, a year and a half after it shipped.
"Windows Vista offers significant advances in security and productivity and we
recommend that enterprises that have not yet deployed it should absolutely
evaluate its benefits," Veghte's letter said.
However, many analysts and customers don't see that much – if any --
productivity enhancement so far.
"Nobody's convinced me how, with the workload I do, that Aero Glass [Vista's new
graphical interface] does anything for me," said Cherry. "Is there anything
Microsoft can say [that's going to help me] to write one more article a week?
[Otherwise] that's not going to increase my productivity," he added.
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