Windows XP gets its second (third, fourth, fifth, six...) wind
From
The Register:
Windows XP given additional resuscitation
Looks like the Small, Cheap Computer� craze has yet again broken Microsoft's nerve to completely kill off Windows XP.
Following the software giant's concession to extend the life of XP Home for the sub-notebook market until 2010, Microsoft is today granting the same reprieve for low-cost desktop PCs too.
Microsoft has been under considerable pressure from computer makers to keep XP licensing available for budget systems. The last-gen OS was originally set for total extinction in June, 2008 � but the popularity of smaller boxes which lack the resources to run Vista adequately has given Microsoft reason to rethink its decision. Faced with either bumping the expiration date or letting Linux eat the entire emerging market, Microsoft has chosen to let Vista play the fall guy again.
Or as Microsoft explains the story at the Computex expo in Taipei, customers were demanding Windows on the low-devices because it is familiar to them.
According to Redmond, it's working with more than 20 OEMs on the extended offering. They include Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Quanta, Acer and Asus.
When the XP home licensing extension expires in 2010, Microsoft has said the successor to Vista (Windows 7), will already be in the hands of consumers. CEO Steve Ballmer insists the company hasn't made any blunders with Vista, but soon departing chairman Bill Gates has said the company could learn "plenty of lessons" from its handling of the OS.
Heh... Schadenfreude sure feels good -- I was on the Windows 2000 ship team at MSFT, XP was OK when it was being developed but Vista is a bloated hog of an OS designed by a balkanized collection of committees who didn't talk to each other and who were fighting turf battles over every last byte.
Posted by DaveH at June 5, 2008 8:57 PM