Slashdot Mirror


One Year Later, "Dead" XP Still Going Strong

snydeq writes "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."

2 of 538 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    32bit is a dead end. How much RAM would you stuff into your computers if your OS and applications could use it. The price of RAM is through the floor and nobody buys the stuff because more than 3GB is completely useless in a typical Windows PC due to architecture limitations.

  2. Re:It's dead, Jim by Toonol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Conversely, I wonder how much XP's continued prominence is going to delay any of those incompatible technologies from taking hold?