The Live Indian Entertainment Blog

The slow, gradual death of Windows XP is about to start, as Dell announced on Wednesday that it would stop offering Windows XP as a pre-installed option on computers at the end of September. That's early, as Microsoft's drop-dead date for the end of such pre-installations was set to be Oct. 22nd.

Here's what Dell said, in a blog post:

"Per Microsoft guidelines regarding Windows XP, system vendors like Dell will no longer be able to ship systems with XP Professional and XP Home after October 22, 2010. This means that we will stop offering XP as an option for customers starting this month in preparation for next month's deadline. One other important thing to note is that Dell plans to continue Windows XP driver support until December 2012."

This is just for pre-installation of Windows XP. Microsoft has previously said that Windows XP Downgrade rights, which gives buyers of PCs Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate the ability to get an XP disc (or even Vista) that they can downgrade with, themselves, will be an option through the life of Windows 7.

Naturally, those with volume-license agreements have further options with regards to XP and Vista. Despite the fact that XP's market share is finally dropping, as Windows 7 gains fans, it still has a huge number of proponents who say its "good enough."

Microsoft's Windows XP mode for Windows 7 was seen as a way to "convince" businesses to adopt Windows 7. It virtually guaranteed that if you couldn't run it in 7, you could run it in XP mode. Problem was, it came ill-designed for such a task.

After all, it was intended to allow businesses to upgrade their systems to Windows 7 while not worrying about compatibility with older apps. At the same time, however, it required that the systems it was run on have hardware virtualization capability. That requirement confused many.

In addition, why would you require a technology that older systems at many businesses running Windows XP simply did not have? Microsoft "got it," and on Thursday announced that it has removed that requirement.

Of course, Windows XP Mode will leverage virtualization technology such as Intel VT or AMD-V if available. At the same time, Microsoft continues to require that users of Windows XP Mode have the most expensive versions of Windows 7: Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions. Of course, millions of consumers have switched from XP to Windows 7 Home Premium. For those, there is no option.

Microsoft probably views Windows XP Mode as most valuable to businesses, and those customers would probably opt for Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise. John Q. Public, and perhaps small businesses as well, however, are left out in the cold.