Dell charges for ‘Downgrade’

Dell Inc. will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday, according to the company’s Web site.

The amazing floundering that is Microsoft Vista continues. A year and a half after it’s release, the public is still not convinced. Even though XP is scheduled to be pulled from the shelves on June 30th, there is still demand for XP on new computers and Dell is going to charge to meet that demand.

Even though Microsoft is going to stop selling XP licenses, it’s still within the terms of the Vista license to ‘downgrade’ a Vista Business or Vista Ultimate version to the XP Professional version.

Vista was released commercially in January 2007, nearly 17 months ago, but even with the release of Service Pack 1, the OS has not achieved widespread acceptance. In fact, it seems that anti-Vista sentiment is higher than ever. Back in January of this year Infoworld named Vista #2 on a list of all time PC flops, a dubious honor.

If you are in the market for a new PC and wondering if paying $50 for “last year’s technology” is worth it, you might want to take a peek at this tongue in cheek article reviewing an “upgrade” from Windows Vista to Windows XP.