To push its Vista which received lukewarm response in the European market, Microsoft is sabotaging XP to make roads for Vista. The company has announced that it will stop selling Windows XP series on 31 January 2008. The company will also force PC makers to stop pre-installing XP on the new PCs as it will stop distributing Windows XP licences to its largest customers, the so-called royalty OEMs like Dell, Toshiba, Gateway and Lenovo.
Dell, like many computer makers, stopped offering XP on most of home desktops and laptops soon after Vista launched at the end of January. It was offering XP on only two models aimed at home users (business users still had XP as an option as it was not easy for an enterprise to migrate its whole structure on new OS overnight).
But, expressing their concern consumers have stormed the IdeaStorm website of Dell to offer Windows XP instead of Vista. Forced by this, the company increased the availability of XP as an option for four models of its Inspiron notebooks and two models of its Dimension desktop PCs.
The reason for people's detest for Vista is not the behaviour pattern that they want status quo and feel comfortable with the OS they have been using for years. In case of Vista, there are so many 'real' problems. First is system upgrade. An year ago when rumours were rife about the new operating system, Microsoft promoted Vista saying that it did not require much hardware upgradation. Many hardware manufacturers were upset with that. But when Vista reached its D-day , it was made clear that you practically can't run this new OS on your current machine unless you have good RAM, at least 1GB (your PC will choke at 512 MB), and a good graphics card.
Vista also has issues of backward compatibility. Adding insult to injury, there are reports that it is not a good gaming platform. Observers feel that Microsoft might have made Vista incapable of handling games in order to promote its Xbox 360.
Recently, users requested Dell to pre-install or give option to install Linux on its PCs. Listening to its customers, Dell announced some notebook PCs for Linux distro. There are reports that Dell has opted for Ubuntu as an alternative to Windows on its PCs. |
As an engineer, I just want a cheep, reliable, fast, light and secure OS. Exactly not Vista.
