April 24th, 2008
Want Windows XP? You Can HAVE It!
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
Hopefully you read that title the way Steve Ballmer probably meant to say it on Thursday. You know, emphasis on the “HAVE” in a sarcastic way. Although I’m sure he didn’t say it that way, he probably wanted to.
Speaking at a news conference in Belgium, where he was to announce the establishment of an “innovation centre” in the Belgian city of Mons, Ballmer gave XP fans a little hope. Ballmer said:
“XP will hit an end-of-life. 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.”
The end-of-life plan for XP states that - with the exception of ULCPCs - Microsoft will stop licensing Windows XP to computer makers and end retail sales by June 30.
Microsoft has been quite adamant about the end of XP. It’s strange that he made his “if customer feedback varies” statement, because if Microsoft bothered to listen, they’d know both analysts and users want XP to continue until the next version of Windows releases (targeted for 2010). In fact, there’s a petition to save XP here with over 164K signatures.
RogerDucky says:
I’m guessing what he means is, “if nobody buys new machines bundled with Vista anymore, then, yeah, we’ll let XP continue.”
April 24th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
LZW says:
That looks like one oissed off SOB! Is he about to punch someone in the nose?
That ‘ultra low cost pc’ version of windows xp which are are extending is said to be a basic edition for 3rd world countries… I wonder if that is like the student edition?
The $10 version of XP isn’t likely to keep home computer users happy for long and they will have the pro version with or without a proper license. The OLPC laptop for 3rd world countries would be the largest market for $10 XP but last I read, the OLPC developers sound very upset about the demand to support windows.
If the antivista crowd (me included) likes the upcoming windows 7, then the xp problem may be solved… Else a lot of current XP users may switch MAC, Linux or BSD!
April 24th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Tom Beckman says:
If you’re buying Dell computers for business, you will be able to “downgrade” to Windows XP after June 30.
See http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/sitelets/solutions/software/business/xp_smb?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~tab=2
April 25th, 2008 at 9:13 am