Dell forced to resurrect XP

Windows XP revival

Following a customer backlash against Window's Vista, Dell has started selling new PCs with Windows XP on them.

Since January Dell had been shipping Vista with almost all its new home computers, but following pleas from customers on its Ideastorm website which invites customers to post suggestions as to how the company can make their service better, they have bowed to pressure. Now customers can choose to have the Home or Professional version of XP on six models of computer.

Dell is the second largest seller of PCs in the world and has 15% of the PC market and had begun a policy that meant Vista was the only operating system now available, but the campaign saying "Don’t eliminate XP just yet" generated 11,000 votes and caused the u-turn.

The research vice-president at analysts Gartner said that this was really odd, and that, "on new PCs, consumers usually do want the latest and greatest."

Many have speculated that the reasons behind this are that consumers are familiar with XP and that it worked well with many peripherals, whereas there have been some reservations concerning Vista and the way it operates.

Microsoft responded by saying that Dell was acting on a small percentage of customer requests and that in the main Vista is being accepted. Also Dell won’t be able to offer XP for too long as from the end of January 2008 PC makers will not be able to buy any new licenses for the operating system.

What do you think? Is Vista as good as it makes out to be? Are you having problems using it? Let us know here. Have your say.