Is Windows XP Really Dead?

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Information Technology / 2007 Top 25 Entrepreneur

Steven Vicinanza

July 9, 2008

Well, it’s official. Microsoft has finally pulled the proverbial plug on Windows XP – and many small business owners are wondering what to do about it. While Microsoft’s replacement, Vista, has lots of new features and a number of security enhancements, the new OS has garnered a reputation for not running well on existing PCs and for having a number of incompatibilities with existing software. So what’s a business owner to do?

With close to a half billion copies in use, Windows XP has been the most successful operating system ever. That’s a hard act to follow. But XP was not perfect, especially with regards to its vulnerability to virus and malware threats from the Internet. So when Vista was released in January of 2007, there were high hopes for better security and ease of use.

While security is much tighter in Vista, that clamp down has affected numerous programs that were not designed with Vista’s restrictions in mind. So it has been a process for many software vendors to upgrade their applications to work with Vista. And if you have an older program that is no longer supported by the vendor, you may be completely out of luck with Vista.

That’s why there has been a real push back on Microsoft to keep XP on the market – at least until all the kinks have been worked out of Vista. There is even a Save XP petition floating around the Internet that has over 200,000 electronic signatures.

Microsoft has made some concessions. Originally slated to end sales on Jan 30th, XP sales were extended through June 30th, 2008. They will also continue to support XP through 2009.

But it’s now July and if you want to buy a new computer, you must buy Vista, right? Technically yes, but Microsoft did leave a loophole for companies that are not ready to take the leap to an all-Vista environment. 

Many hardware vendors are offering you the option to buy Vista, but have them install Windows XP through a loophole called downgrade rights. Downgrade rights gives the vendor the ability to sell you a Vista license but install XP on the system for you. There are a couple of catches here. One is that you must purchase a business version of Vista. The other is that you don’t get the XP installation disk; you get the Vista installation disk. This does, however, allow you to upgrade your PC to Vista when (and if) you are ready. The downgrade rights program varies by vendor. Dell calls this their “Bonus” option.

So for now, you can have your cake and eat it too. If you really want to stick with XP, buy Vista but get XP installed. Not a bad compromise. In the meantime the next version of Windows is scheduled for release next year.  One can only hope there will be no “save Vista” petitions.

About Steve

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