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Opinion Editorial Microsoft to expel XP unless public resists Steve Ballmer, the president of Microsoft, indicated during a speech in Europe on April 24 that the operating system monopoly is considering extending the sale of its XP system beyond June, according to IDG News Service. The popular operating system on millions of computers worldwide is scheduled to be discontinued June 30 and available only on "low-end," or less powerful and costly machines, after that date. Microsoft has pushed its Vista operating system for a year and recently released its first "patch," Service Pack 1. Microsoft then contradicted itself through a public relations firm that stated no extension of the XP deadline is being contemplated. The rationale? Microsoft's marketing studies don't show user support for keeping XP and do show that users like Vista. The 164,000 signatories, as of April 18, to a petition sponsored by InfoWorld asking Microsoft to keep XP alive contradicts Microsoft and is, of course, a drop in the bucket of the installed base. But those who follow computers and technology on the Web and in magazines can attest a large number of people find the older XP far superior to the newer clunky Vista system. Some of the comments are passionate. And it's hard to know, but easy to suspect, that the supporters for Vista who crop up on some of the blogs and forums are shills for Microsoft. Given the chatter on the Web and some articles in computer magazines, Microsoft is doing one of two things. It is totally missing the mark with its research; or, it is ignoring what people want. If the latter, it is doing what many companies do today, which is shoving its agenda down the throat of customers without caring what the consumers really think. That is the hallmark of Microsoft's business practices. One of the best articles on this issue is also in InfoWorld: http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/016944.html. We urge people to sign onto the InfoWorld petition (http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/04/save_windows_xp.html) and to contact Microsoft directly to bombard them with a call to retain XP. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: May 1, 2008
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