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XP's End Will Do More For PC Sales Than Win 8, Says HP Exec

Posted by timothy on from the grass-was-always-greener dept.

dcblogs writes "Hewlett-Packard executives say that the coming demise of Windows XP next year may do what Windows 8 could not, and that's boost PC sales significantly. 'We think this will bring a big opportunity for HP,' said Enrique Lore, senior vice president and general manager of HP's business PCs. Lore was asked, in a later interview, whether the demand for XP replacement systems could help sales more than Windows 8. His response was unequivocal: 'Yes, significantly more, especially on the commercial side,' he said. Lore said 40% to 50% of business users remain on XP systems."

7 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by Atomic+Fro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For the business users still running XP, I don't see them flocking to buy new Windows 8 hardware. They are still on XP because either the software they run won't run on anything else, or they are small businesses that don't have an IT budget. As long as the hardware and software works, they aren't going to go out and buy new systems.

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    1. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by gulikoza · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So what? I still have SP2 machines working just fine. It prints receipts to the customers the same as the first day it was installed. Never patched it. The users working on it are limited and IE is prohibited with the GPO (employees have better work than surf on Facebook). LAN obviously is firewalled, not that this machine (and others similar) need to access the 'net. The only problem would be, if there was a domain wide virus that somebody would bring in with a laptop. However, that hasn't happened in the past 10 year. In my experience 95% of the "viruses" are crap people install themselves ("DHL sent me this packet, but I can't open the confirmation on my e-mail" "Are you expecting to receive something?" "No...why?"). No patches help that, unless it would patch the user, but then I'd be out of work... I have Win 98 as a retro machine here...connected to the Internet, running latest w9x supported firefox (3.6 I belive?), no AV (it's just p3-600). It won't get automagically infected as soon as it's turned on...why would it be?

  2. Wishful Thinking by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just because XP reaches its official "end of life" doesn't mean that people will throw out their computer and go buy a new one. For most people- and businesses too - as long as existing units still get the job done there is no compelling reason to buy a new computer. The fact that Win 8 is crap is also a factor.

    1. Re:Wishful Thinking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Many large institutions cannot legally continue using an out of support operating system.

  3. #define Win7 XP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Win7 is the new XP.

  4. Wrong question by Jawnn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The better question is how many people did not buy a new PC precisely because Windows 8?

  5. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by Mike+Frett · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe it's time to buy Software Suits that are Cross-Platform eh. It's a Company's own fault for locking themselves in to one OS.