Microsoft announced that it will stop sales of Windows XP on all new PCs from 31 January 2008.
However, as part of its phase-out plan, Microsoft stated in January of this year that it would be offering five years of extended support for Windows XP Home Edition and Media Centre users.
Dell is continuing to offer XP-customised machines to small businesses that prefer this OS over Vista.
“Several customers like Tshooter and Eddy have expressed interest in Dell offering Windows XP on small business systems,” said Tom West, director for small business marketing at Dell.
“Dell recognises the needs of small business customers and understands that more time is needed to transition to a new operating system. The plan is to continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this summer,” he said on his official Dell blog.
Industry analysts are saying that sales of Vista may reflect a slower customer uptake than that of its predecessor XP; however, West’s view of the need for a longer transition time for business customers was found when XP was launched also.
A study in 2004 by Canadian IT analyst AssetMetrix Inc found that, based on a survey of 370,000 PCs from 670 US companies, Windows 95/98/NT users accounted for more than 40pc of the corporate users of all versions of Windows.
Dell has no plans to offer home users the chance to customise with XP, as it said “the preference and demand is for the ‘latest and greatest’ technology which includes Windows Vista”.
Currently many widely used software packages such as Norton Anti-Virus are not yet compatible with Windows Vista.
By Marie Boran
