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Loading ...Microsoft flack douses Ballmer’s suggestion of XP reprieve
Well, that certainly didn’t take long. An update from our friends at IDG News Service:
Comments by Steve Ballmer at a press conference in Europe on Thursday led to speculation that Microsoft is reconsidering its June 30 deadline to stop selling most new Windows XP licenses. A spokeswoman from Microsoft’s public relations firm said there is no change to the current plan, however.
“Our plan for Windows XP availability is unchanged. We’re confident that’s the right thing to do based on the feedback we’ve heard from our customers and partners,” the spokeswoman said, reading from a Microsoft statement.
Ballmer’s comments at a press conference at Louvain-la-Neuve University in Belgium led to a flurry of reports that Microsoft may be considering an extension of its deadline.
“If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter, but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments,” Ballmer said, according to Reuters. Microsoft did not have a transcript of the event, but the spokeswoman from Waggener Edstrom said the report seemed accurate.
The spokeswoman said Microsoft is aware that some customers are pushing for an extension to the deadline — more than 160,000 people have signed a “Save XP” petition launched by Infoworld magazine, for example. But the company has also done its own research among partners and customers and feels that “the dates are right,” she said.
“We feel we’ve made the right accommodations for customers in certain segments who may need more time to transition to Windows Vista,” she said. “But as Steve noted, we maintain a constant stance of listening to our customers and our partners. That’s what is guiding our plan, and will continue to guide us going forward.”
The “accommodations” refer to several exceptions that Microsoft has made to the June 30 deadline. For example, companies that make volume purchases of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate can ask their vendor to “downgrade” their license to Windows XP. Microsoft has also made exceptions for the emerging class of small, ultra-low-cost PCs, and it will continue to provide Windows XP Starter Edition for PCs sold in emerging markets.
Retailers and PC vendors can also continue to sell any backlog of Windows XP licenses that they bought before the June 30 deadline. Beyond those exceptions, most new Windows licenses purchased after June 30 will be for Windows Vista.
The owner of a PC support center near Boston questioned which users Microsoft had been gathering feedback from.
“I’d love to know exactly what, and how many ‘customers’ Microsoft claims to be getting this feedback from,” David Bookbinder, owner of Total PC Support, said via e-mail. “My guess, and it’s an educated one, is that it’s more likely stockholder feedback.”
Total PC Support provides service to home and small-business users in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
“I service over 600 clients and have yet to find ONE speak highly of Vista, or wish XP to end,” he wrote. “And that goes from the biggest novice on up.”
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April 27th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Death of Spaghetti code.
With the demise of XP many other great projects will suffer. How smart would it be to leave XP as is. Selling millions of copies. OS’s no longer need an end date. Not like in the old days when customer support came with the hardware and Operating System. Even then they would support the old OS at a premium. The way MicroSoft has it. If my computer dies I’ll have to buy a used one. I sure hope the group for “Saving XP” is successful. Then there will be no reason to worry, XP will be around for another 10 or 20 years. That would give the SSDS VB5.0 spaghetti code a pretty big window.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Can you believe how arrogant microsoft has become Vista is by all accounts the worst version of windows ever created and microsoft must no this unless the are total living on another planet so why not just improve XP like 2000 did for nt and call it a day because the world as far as I here will never change and myself like so many others will just keep wiping out Vista computers and go back to XP Pro