Not officially confirmed by Microsoft, but over at the Apple Insider Prince McLean has posted an article about Microsoft extending the deadline for PC makers who wish to ship new business computers with an XP license.
At first I was a little hesitant to make a post about this as Prince McLean is known for his anti-Microsoft stance. However, this article did make some sense.
Essentially he is claiming that according to a source within Hewlett Packard, Microsoft has agreed to extend the option of selling Windows XP for use on new PCs for another year, through April 30, 2010.
In a previous post of mine – Windows XP Support Ends in 2009 and 2014 – I detail the dates Microsoft has for phasing out support for Windows XP. These dates still stand.
But by allowing OEM’s like Hewlett Packard to continue to sell Windows XP on their business PC’s, even though Windows 7 is being launched makes great business sense to me.
The reality is that Windows XP SP3 is a great system for businesses and many companies are not in a position to upgrade to Windows 7 for 12- 18 months at least.
(This is not an unusual situation either as when XP shipped you could still get NT4 and Windows 2000.)
Also, it is worth pointing out that these PC’s will ship with Windows 7 AND a Windows XP downgrade license. So Microsoft sells two licenses for one computer. Flexibility for the end user and Microsoft still ship Windows 7 with the new PC.
Makes sense to me…
Regards
Marc Liron – Microsoft MVP
PS – Since I wrote this post, Mary-Jo Foley has put up this post on the topic.
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