Sunday, March 23, 2008

A petition to save Windows XP

I was surprised to find this InfoWorld article: 100,000 customers tell Microsoft to save XP.

But I understand where it comes from. June 30th is supposed to be the last day you can buy a Microsoft Windows XP license. My client started working on their Vista implementation even before Vista had been released. They have thrown more budget and bodies at this Windows release than at any other - and yet we will barely squeak under that deadline. I know that few other organizations will be able to end their reliance on Windows XP in time.

Now this doesn't really affect most enterprise customers. From what I understand, most have the right to buy Vista and downgrade to XP. But this is a long article with some great detail on the issue. Who knows, you may even want to sign the petition.

Certainly June 30th will be a date worth watching.

[EDIT 26/03/2008] I am now seeing quite a bit of press on this topic. Here is a great ComputerWorld article that describes product and support lifecycles in great detail. Some good information here. [/EDIT]

[EDIT 14/04/2008] News of the petition has now made it to MSNBC! Actually, their article Windows XP Fans Don't Want it to XPire has lots of good detail and summary of the issue. [/EDIT]

[EDIT 28/04/2008] Microsoft hasn't exactly backed off of the June 30th deadline, but it looks like we can still get what we want for at least another year. Here's my latest article with the details:
XP available after the June 30th deadline [/EDIT]

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