Dell offers 'Windows Vista Bonus' to frightened customers
The 'bonus' is XP instead of Vista
Dell is actively promoting a Microsoft licensing loophole to channel partners eager to keep selling PCs installed with Windows XP, after Microsoft's official cut off.
The Dell channel blog is pointing resellers to the loophole in the Windows Vista license that enables business customers to downgrade from the unwanted Windows Vista to its dated, but comfortable and better-supported predecessor.
According to the blog: "Dell can sell what we've branded 'Windows Vista Bonus' which allows us to preinstall XP Professional with a Vista license (on select system categories). This lets customer's upgrade to the Vista platform when they're ready. And yes, Dell will support both OSs."
Dell's blog points resellers to further information here.
Dell, meanwhile, is also making Windows XP available as an image to those partners using the company's Custom Factory Integration service.
The blog was designed to coincide with the last day Windows XP was officially available from Microsoft. From now on, you can only get Windows Vista. Officially.
Dell has taken a leading position in continuing to offer Windows XP. Earlier this month Dell vowed to keep selling PCs running the operating system until "at least 2009".
Dell's stance of not just offering Windows XP directly but actively telling its huge ecosystem of resellers how they, too, can game Microsoft's system and continue selling Windows XP demonstrates a significant shift in the OEM's relationship with Microsoft.
With chief software architect Bill Gates' departure fresh in the air, it should be remembered how, under Gates' tenure last decade as chief executive, Microsoft exploited its position as supplier of a popular PC operating system to play hardball with PC OEMs on licensing Windows.
During the US Department of Justice's antitrust trial, IBM revealed that Microsoft had delayed giving IBM access to Windows 95 simply because IBM refused to kill its own OS/2 operating system or agree to not bundle its SmartSuite rival to Office on IBM PCs.®
COMMENTS
is ANYONE really running VISTA?
2008 .....
VISTA boils down to: a £350 Dell laptop, 2gig ram, dualcore processor, NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY AN AVI FILE WITHOUT IT BREAKING UP.
HELLO? HELLO?
Happy in the UK
I got some Dell Optiplex 740 boxes at the end of June here in the UK that had XP SP2 pre-installed with Vista business on disc _and_ with a XP SP2 service disc too.
I'm happy.
The Vista test
I had 2 identical laptops arrive last week, both HP's with Vista on.
I fired them both up at the same time, one with an XP install CD in.
I managed to get XP installed, plus all drivers, and sitting on the desktop ready to use faster than Vista booted, ran a speed test and auto-installed the HP bundled crap on laptop 2.
Vista is poor on like for like hardware, but lets not forget the extra strain put on it by shoddy bundled software out of the box. MS should put some quality control on this kind of thing.
@ Jeff R
Errm... Jeff, not to come to the defence of Mickeysoft or anything, but... _TEN MINUTES TO BOOT_?! And _FIVE MINUTES TO SHUT DOWN_?! What are you running? It doesn't take _three_ minutes for Vista to boot _in emulation, using VMWare_ on my iMac! The same install boots in under two minutes (about 30 seconds more that OS X does) when I boot straight from the Boot Camp partition. And it takes under two minutes to shut down, eiher under emulation or when booted directly. What on _Earth_ is going on when _Macs_ run Vista better than purpose-built WinBoxes?
