The hits just keep coming for Windows Vista and Microsoft and they’re not the only ones suffering due to them. Dell, in an attempt to satisfy customer demands, has announced that Windows XP will be offered as an option to customers even after June 30th, the day Microsoft officially halts sales of the operating system.
On the surface, that sounds lovely but it’s the details where matters get sketchy. To be able to offer this convenience, Dell’s going to use Microsoft’s “downgrade” license, which allows PC vendors to provide XP under the Vista license. In the words of Ephraim Schwartz, of sister site InfoWorld, this means that “the user is buying a Vista license that it can apply to XP, and Microsoft can still claim a Vista sale”.
That’s a cheap, underhanded tactic if ever there was one. It’s a convenient way for Microsoft to report misleadingly inflated sales numbers of Windows Vista, even though a lot of those sales numbers potentially apply to customers who bought the OS with no intention of using it.
In other words, every copy of Windows sold after June 30th, whether it be of XP or Vista, will be reported by Microsoft as sales of Windows Vista, and the company will use that to show how popular the OS is. Don’t be surprised to hear some fantastically high numbers from Microsoft later this year. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “two for the price of one”, doesn’t it?
I bought a copy of XP in december 2006, and got that very same deal.
So that misleading practice is not new.
My copy of Vista is still in its original packaging, who knows maybe it'll be worth something someday...
With time one may think [s]he has seen already any conceivable sort of c..p associated with m$, but there seems to be no limit...