I’ll say it right now – I’m not a big fan of Windows Vista. I don’t see the point. I don’t see the need to change from what XP delivers. And XP delivers a stable, workable, useful, and familiar operating environment for millions of users world-wide. Microsoft introduced Windows Vista on January 30th, 2007. At that time, Dell only offered one choice – Windows Vista. Windows XP had gone away, even though support for it [by Microsoft] will exist through at least 2009 and in all reality, much longer. In addition to “home users”, many, many businesses rely on Windows XP. Changing a company’s computers from XP to Vista requires months of compatibility testing. If you have experimented at all with Vista, chances are you have found a piece of hardware or software that worked fine on XP but doesn’t work on Vista. Ahh, the trials and tribulations of a new operating system.
Fortunately, after much consumer feedback, Dell has today changed their policy, and will offer Windows XP on select notebooks and desktops. Windows Vista will continue to be available on their product lines. Dell states that Windows XP will be available as a choice at least through the summer, but possibly through the end of the year. At the time of this post, Microsoft will force Dell (and any other manufacturer) to stop offering Windows XP effective 12/31/07.
This is great news! Windows Vista, for all of it’s dressed up features, require a bit more processing power and memory to use effectively. Since Windows XP is now available, one can build a lower-end PC (with a decent processor and 1GB of RAM), saving some money compared to a comperable Windows Vista box. Or, one could put this money toward something I always like to have – a bigger LCD screen!
In the future, if Windows XP is no longer supported but your PC is still useful, one would be able to upgrade the RAM and/or graphics card to take advantage of any features of Vista.
For now, the features of Vista aren’t compelling enough for one to make the change, especially when XP is doing everything I need it to do just fine.
For the impartial parties, here a bunch of links to hopefully answer any and all questions:
MSNBC: Dell to offer Windows XP
Differences between Windows Vista versions
Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
Top 10 Reasons to get Windows Vista
Top 10 Reasons to not get Windows Vista
Dell Inc.