Round Rock (TX) – Retail and direct OEM sales of Windows XP will be drying up by the end of this month, so it should not be too surprising that vendors are pushing out their XP inventory this month. Dell has added three final systems to its XP lineup, which customers will be able to order until June 18.      

We have received word from the manufacturer that Dell’s last XP systems added will be the Inspiron 530s (from $549) and 530 (from $799), as well as the Inspiron 1520 notebook (from $799). All systems come with Windows XP Home Edition, Intel processors and at least 2 GB of system memory. The models XPS 210 and XPS 630 models also remain available until midnight June 18.

Dell said that the June 18 date has been put in place to meet Microsoft’s June 30 last-day-to-ship OEM Windows XP deadline. After June 18, buyers of certain products can still get Windows XP via detour: Dell will be offering a downgrade service to Windows XP Professional for customers who are purchasing the desktops XPS 630 and 720 H2C or the notebook M1730. However, buyers will need to purchase Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate to be eligible for the downgrade.

Dell currently offers eleven different Latitude and Precision notebooks as well as ten desktops with Windows XP for business users and corporate customers.  The June 18 deadline also applies to the business segment and while Dell pitches Vista heavily, the company offers its corporate customers “downgrade rights” that are included with a purchase of Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate licenses. The manufacturer said that it “has the ability to exercise “Windows Vista downgrade rights” on your behalf in the factory if your business is still reliant upon Windows XP and you’d prefer to have Windows XP Professional preinstalled on your PCs.’

According to Microsoft’s life-cycle policy, Windows XP Home Edition, Professional, Tablet PC Edition, Professional x64 Edition and Media Center Edition will no longer be available to the direct OEM and retail channel after June 30, 2008. System builder licenses will be offered until January 31, 2009. Mainstream support for Windows XP will remain available until April 14, 2009.

Microsoft said will continue to sell Windows XP in a stripped-down version, primarily targeting manufacturers from Far East and their entry level products, such as the Acer One, Asus Eee PC, MSI Wind and others.

A quote from tomshardware.com that made me laugh an...

Jun 16, 2008 02:36     

A quote from tomshardware.com that made me laugh and I thought I'd share with you here. It goes something like this: "Floppy disks and drives might outlive PATA drives thanks to MS' former OS requirements." Lucky they are in a monopolistic position, else they'd be doomed beyond recovery from any cash flow... lucky for them... unlucky for us...
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Are they communists?

Jun 16, 2008 16:12     

"Dell will be offering a downgrade service to Windows XP...However, buyers will need to purchase Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate to be eligible for the downgrade". Think about it. What comes to mind? Absolute monopoly? Yes. What else? May be old forgotten communistic Soviet Union? Former Russia, as some smart Americans use to call it. But, why Soviet Union? Why communists? Because, bundle like this belong there. Because, only there, if one wanted to buy a good wanted product, it was available only bundled with a bad unwanted product. Small can of nice coffee with huge bag of sugar, good book-boring book, science education-communist education, windows xp- windows vista. Ops, last one is here, not there. Did Bill Gates build a secret virtual communist pc empire and trying to take over the real world?

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after trying vista

Jun 16, 2008 19:05     

i find vista better,but dell gives you crappy vista basic when all the others give you vista premium and 64 bit at that they give you less memory and smaller hard drives,but price it the same as other companys that give you more
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Drivers for Vista only

Jun 17, 2008 07:43     

Some motherboards have drivers for Vista only. So you can't even buy a computer and convert back to Windows XP. It's a shame.
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Sounds like the same whines

Jun 18, 2008 12:16     

I heard the same complaints about XP when it came out. 'There is not enough driver support' 'It's different, I don't like it' I find that Vista run faster and smoother on my rig than XP did.
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