Suppose they gave an OS and nobody came?

[theblue1]

Boxmaker Dell has responded to relentless customer demand (as expressed on their IdeaStorm wishlist bb) by reintroducing the beloved old standby Windows XP -- first to some of their business lines and now -- facing a snowball of demand -- to some of their key consumer lines.

And Dell is trumpeting it in their adverts, too. As I was reading this article on ITWire, I noticed a GoogleAd from Dell Business Systems adjacent.

iTWire - Dell brings back XP for encore


Now... MS has said it will stop offering the XP license to big boxmakers at the end of next January (Jan 08).

So, after that... you may be forced to buy from smaller venders who'll have extra time to switch over (2009)


BTW... that was the second triumph of consumer demand over corporate boneheadedness from Dell's IdeaStorm customer blog thingie. The first? The IdeaStorm crowd demanded -- and got -- Linux preinstalled (instead of Windows) as an option on business machines.


It's nice Dell is listening to customers.

Don't you kind of wish Microsoft would? (I mean about XP, that is. The move to Vista was a cynical one driven by the big co's desire to churn the computer hard- and software markets.)


_____________


I was just looking at the IdeaStorm front page wishlist/blog headlines:

Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot

Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office

Have Firefox pre-installed as default browser

[My fave] NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION

No OS Preloaded

Stripped down, fast Linux Box

[and skipping past some more Linux specific stuff...]

Become the open source OEM