Redmond just did it again. Yup, XP's death was again greatly exaggerated. They initially said that sales of the old warhorse would stop six months after the release of Win7. But Michael Silver of Gartner screamed bloody murder as that would cause a whole lot of trouble for managing PCs in enterprises. Guess what, a few hours later Redmond backtracked and said it would extend the aged OS's lifespan in the post-Windows 7 world to as late as April 2011. You definitely want to do your "migration homework" before going to Win7, and deal with the IE6 apps you may have forgotten about...
"Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate customers will have the option to downgrade to Windows XP Professional from PCs that ship within 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7 or until the release of a Windows 7 service pack, whichever is sooner, and if a service pack is developed," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
It's obvious that Redmond would -like- to kill XP as soon as they can. They only make 15 bucks selling it to netbook vendors, compared to an estimated $75 or more per copy of Vista on a notebook. Win7's biggest competitor is not Mac, or Linux, or even Vista, it's XP. And if I can end off with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek remark... some one last week commented that Win7 really is nothing more than Vista SP2, but cleverly repositioned and re-branded
"Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate customers will have the option to downgrade to Windows XP Professional from PCs that ship within 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7 or until the release of a Windows 7 service pack, whichever is sooner, and if a service pack is developed," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
It's obvious that Redmond would -like- to kill XP as soon as they can. They only make 15 bucks selling it to netbook vendors, compared to an estimated $75 or more per copy of Vista on a notebook. Win7's biggest competitor is not Mac, or Linux, or even Vista, it's XP. And if I can end off with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek remark... some one last week commented that Win7 really is nothing more than Vista SP2, but cleverly repositioned and re-branded
