Microsoft says the Vista-related move is in line with previous OS upgrades, but some users arent happy
By Paul Krill US | Monday, 23 April, 2007

Microsofts plan to cease OEM shipments of Windows XP is not sitting well with some observers, based on internet-driven feedback.
According to a Microsoft Life-Cycle Policy web page, Microsoft plans to discontinue shipments of Windows XP to OEMs on January 31, 2008. The page also says retail licences will be discontinued at that time. Editions affected include the Professional, Tablet PC, Professional x64, Home and Media Centre editions of XP.

Chatters on Silicon Valley.com cite issues with the suitability of Vista on existing machines and say they might just go to Linux instead.

If Microsoft forces us to make a choice of Vista or Linux, they might just be unpleasantly surprised as to the choice many of us will make, one chatter wrote.

I am telling anyone who has not yet upgraded from Win 9x to XP that they had better do it right away because Vista will never run on their Win 98-era machine. If they dont upgrade to XP right away, they will have to switch to Linux. The only alternative to that is to throw away their computer and buy a brand new one!

Another chatter said it was time for enterprises to stock up on shrink-wrapped copies of XP Pro.

A chatter on Dells Direct2Dell site expressed similar reservations.
I dont care how much youve tested your systems with Vista, it simply will not be enough, the chatter says.
In the corporate world, there are countless applications that are going to fail miserably with Vista in offices that are standardised on XP Pro.

Dell says it plans to continue offering XP for now. Dell recognises the needs of small business customers and understands that more time is needed to transition to a new operating system. The plan is to continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this [northern] summer, the company says on Direct2Dell.

In a statement, Microsoft acknowledges its Vista emphasis.
Windows Vista is safer, easier to use, better connected and more entertaining than any operating system weve ever released, and were encouraged by the positive customer response weve seen to date, the company says in a statement.
Its standard practice to allow OEMs, retailers and system builders to continue offering the previous version of Windows for a certain period of time after a new version is released, and this information as it applies to Windows XP has been available to our partners and to the public, since last year, Microsoft says.
Microsoft has reported that more than 20 million copies of Vista shipped from January 30 to February 28, the first month of general availability.

A Harris survey of home-based users in March, however, found that only 12% of the 2,223 respondents plan to upgrade.

There are pluses and minuses to upgrading, according to analyst Michael Cherry, of Directions on Microsoft. Security features, such as BitLocker Drive Encryption, are driving upgrades, he says. However, hardware issues have been a problem, he says,The major factor I think thats putting a damper on it is people being uncomfortable with what the hardware requirements are, he says.

Questions have arisen about configuration matters such as the circuitry of graphics cards, he adds. Lawsuits have even arisen about what it means to be Vista-capable.

Cherry says Vista appears not to have affected PC sales rates, either upwards or downwards. Vista shipments have been about as expected, according to analyst Brett Waldman of IDC, who also acknowledges there are equipment issues with the new platform. Shipment levels so far are similar to what XP presented, he says.

To run Vistas Aero interfaces requires an advanced graphics card, Waldman says. A lot of low-end PCs do not have that, he says. Otherwise, upgrading a PC to 1GB of memory should make it Vista-capable, he says.