Dell rumored to be selling XP until 2012, Ballmer says MS can "wake up smarter"

Windows XP has a date with destiny scheduled for June 30, but it looks like the plucky OS just isn't ready to go: Ultraportable OEMs will be able to preload XP until "one year after the general availability of Windows 7," whenever that is, and now we're hearing reports that Dell's telling customers it'll sell XP on professional systems until 2012. The Dell thing is just a rumor for now, but what's Steve Ballmer doing telling reporters that although XP is EOL, "if customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter" and extend XP sales? Um, Steve? Customers have been feeding back like crazy and Microsoft has kind of ignored them, remember? Maybe it's time for a quick nap.

Update: That was pretty funny for a totally unintentional typo, wasn't it?

Read - CNET article quoting Ballmer
Read - Dell rumors

[John @ Apr 24th 2008 4:22PM]

Dull?

[conor @ Apr 24th 2008 4:31PM]

beat me to it

[Todd @ Apr 24th 2008 4:40PM]

Freudian slip.

[Mark @ Apr 24th 2008 4:50PM]

DID THIS JUST SAY "DULL" A MINUTE AGO?

[o29 @ Apr 24th 2008 5:25PM]

YES IT DID

[mymaclife @ Apr 24th 2008 7:08PM]

Dell and Microsoft are perfectly suited - 2 different halves of the same dull crap

[Randavance @ Apr 24th 2008 4:22PM]

"Dull rumored to be selling XP until 2012"

Typo or bad joke?

[Lein @ Apr 24th 2008 4:29PM]

The latter, it seems. Funny, the Macbook Pro is silver, yet nobody complains about that being ugly. And the Latitude D420 and D430 can both fit in a manila envelope, yet they get no special recognition despite having four times the connectivity of the Air, while ALSO being crafted of magnesium alloy and costing up to 2/3 less.

[Drew Scott @ Apr 24th 2008 6:29PM]

Wow, chill out, Lein. Nobody was dissing Dell and/or comparing any Dell PC to the macbook air.

[Chirag @ Apr 24th 2008 4:22PM]

some sense finally... XP is a great product.

[Backwards People @ Apr 24th 2008 4:29PM]

All that's left now is the silly Analog-to-Digital conversion fiasco...

...unfortunately I don't see that changing.

[tom @ Apr 24th 2008 4:30PM]

+1 XP is great, probably the best Windows. If Ballmer really proceed with EOL, I am packing up and moving to Mac or Linux.

[dagamer34 @ Apr 24th 2008 4:49PM]

XP is considered great now because it really didn't do that much architecturally. It's Windows 2000 with a nice interface, and back then, the kernel wasn't such a mess. But when they decided to tag on a bunch of consumer oriented features, well.. you have Windows Vista.

At some point in the next 10 years, Microsoft is going to have to say "screw compatibility" in order to build a leaner kernel which new apps can be built and older apps emulated.

[Liam @ Apr 24th 2008 4:54PM]

What dagamer said. If MS don't start from scratch at some point, they will die a slow, undignified death. They'd do well to just do what Apple did, and run too platforms alongside each other whilst teething troubles are sorted out, and give the newer one a compatibility layer. Only recently have you not been able to run 'classic' apps within OS X, and even then only on intel machines/those running leopard.

[BigD145 @ Apr 24th 2008 6:50PM]

It still sells, so why not keep it?

[giuliop @ Apr 24th 2008 8:02PM]

"At some point in the next 10 years, Microsoft is going to have to say "screw compatibility" in order to build a leaner kernel which new apps can be built and older apps emulated."

They have already tried that. Microsoft's untold big plan for .NET was:

1. Build a new, better and complete API
2. Make everyone develop applications for it
3. Ditch the underlaying, rotten and flawed operating system
4. Make chip makers support the API natively.

Pity it failed miserably. It just stopped at number 2; it was a naive move, thinking that developers would switch to a new API overnight. .NET is still struggling, and Microsoft is in limbo, with no development tool to cover Win32 native applications, which, to their dismal, are still the only applications being developed for the desktop (excluding other OSs, of course). This, once again, shows the current weakness of Microsoft, both in strategy and ability to impose themselves on the market; a thing they have not been able to do for a long, long time now.

[digitallysick @ Apr 24th 2008 4:25PM]

Dull? hahaha! yeah dell is dull

[steve @ Apr 24th 2008 4:28PM]

Dull rumored to be selling XP until 2012, Ballmer says MS can "wake up smarter"

I'm using a Dell. Not heard of Dull, they some chinese knock off?

[kal326 @ Apr 24th 2008 4:28PM]

This rumor may have some legs, Dell(Dull) was one of the companies that started demanding to be able to sell XP on new computers even after Vista's launch.

That our they could just stockpile a ton of OEM licenses before June and continue to sell them that way.

[kal326 @ Apr 24th 2008 4:30PM]

Dude, your getting a DULL!

[Jubei @ Apr 24th 2008 4:31PM]

DULL + MS XP. Perfect. Good job in implying that the combination is a complete bore. :-)

[NNTPgrip @ Apr 24th 2008 4:36PM]

Ditch Vista Business and Ultimate. Give these Ultimate "Extras" to the Home Premium version.

Stop marketing Vista to corporate customers.

Have the Vista Home line only.

Make Windows 7 the next thing to bring together the "code branches" so to speak. Please fix the GUI in 7, I would like to do things with the same amount of clicks as XP or less, not more.

Default Office 2007 to the old non-???x stuff, and give users the option of classic menus.

Fix Exchange 2007 (I would like to use powershell ONLY for scripting, not for the general config, and give me a damn 2007 Exchange enabled Active Directory MMC)

[mymaclife @ Apr 24th 2008 7:10PM]

Get a Mac instead and save yourself a lot of pain!

[rock99rock @ Apr 24th 2008 8:56PM]

I suppose you would want him to get a vasectomy too? Silly mac-man. Why would a man of NNTP's administrative stature dumb himself down to a mac? Simple blasphemy.

STONE HIM!!

[Ignatius @ Apr 24th 2008 8:59PM]

You're not saving pain, you're just diverting it elsewhere. Your ass. And your wallet.

[JJV @ Apr 24th 2008 11:10PM]

I didnt realize that getting a mac made your chair hurt. hmmm, im on one and my ass doesnt hurt, neither does my wallet.

this old price is too expensive mac thing isnt relevent anymore since macs are much more affordable and generally have better hardware specs than the windows equivalent. So really stop embarrassing yourself by complaining "wo macs are soo expensive"

[Ordeith @ Apr 25th 2008 5:39PM]

JV:

Dual Quad Core Xeon's, 16GB RAM, RAID SAS, Windows Server 2008. $2500.

'nough said.

[giantenemycrab @ Apr 24th 2008 4:41PM]

*sigh* It's Windows 2000 allover again..

[noonas @ Apr 24th 2008 4:56PM]

Actually my company still uses Wirus2000

[dj-kenpo @ Apr 24th 2008 5:25PM]

I kept using windows 2000 until xp sp2.

I figure I'll still be using xp until vista sp2.

[Karl Hackswell @ Apr 24th 2008 4:42PM]

Wow, he completely ruined the validity of his post and just lost all respect from his readers by choosing to turn off Clippy. Quite a world we live in, isnt it?

[Dualboot @ Apr 24th 2008 6:35PM]

FWIW, Clippy wouldn't have caught this, both "Dull" and "Dell" are valid words in the dictionary and Clippy isn't smart enough to know what you wanted to write...

I'm torn between Vista and XP. My home machine runs Vista Ultimate, and it works OK, as long as I pay attention to the drivers. I wouldn't trust on my work machine however, especially with all the corporate stuff I have running on it. I'm happy to keep running XP for as long as it's supported.

[Boarderwoot @ Apr 24th 2008 4:43PM]

oh sure...article authors get undo buttons but not posers

[Boarderwoot @ Apr 24th 2008 4:44PM]

*posters....damnit

[giantenemycrab @ Apr 24th 2008 4:45PM]

Ahh the irony.

[snitch @ Apr 24th 2008 4:49PM]

Well ballmer said today that Microsoft would be willing to keep Windows XP available for everyday computers past its June 30th cutoff date but doesn't see a demand for it, Yeah right, if it wasn't for XP microsoft would been firing people left & right by now

[Fred @ Apr 24th 2008 4:51PM]

Customers have been feeding back like crazy? When? Oh, you mean the couple thousand people that signed the petition out of the, what, millions of XP users? Yeah, that's a huge amout of users...

[Brad @ Apr 24th 2008 5:04PM]

No no, it is tens of millions of XP users. A few thousand out of tens of millions. So really, it's about the same proportion of people that use Macs. Sure, they're vocal, but they're the vast minority. They also represent a tiny fraction when compared to the number of Vista users.

I'd bet Dell wants to keep it around as long as possible because they have all their training and infrastructure built around it, not because they care about a few thousand people who are probably not Dell customers signing an online petition.

That's okay, Nilay. Make this seem like a bigger issue than it is.

[Evan @ Apr 24th 2008 5:09PM]

Most will just grumble to themselves and live with it. There's been lots of studies about how people put up with bad service and food in restaurants, long wait times in phone support, etc., and never complain. Only a small percentage of dissatisfied customers stand up for themselves and complain. Therefore, if a few thousand people signed a petition, it's likely there are many times more people who are disatisfied but don't speak up.

[Jon @ Apr 24th 2008 5:32PM]

@Brad:

I agree with that Dell is probably thinking for itself and trying to save money. Albeit, they will probably continue to make money offering both Vista and XP as options for building a system.

Those who have a problem with Vista really have a problem with "change". Vista is just as customizable as XP, it is more secure, and runs smoothly. If it doesn't run smoothly on your system, get it off the Pentium III and 128mb of RAM. This is the same as the idiots who bought Crysis and thought it would run on their 5 year old system.

CHANGE, people. It's sometimes good to change once in a while. Or go to Mac or Linux...I, for one, use all 3.

[MemphisNET @ Apr 24th 2008 4:53PM]

Pretty sure everyone hated XP UNTIL Vista was ready for prime-time. So why does XP get a free pass now.

I've had little to no problems with Vista, and certainly not the problems I had with XP when it was released (and maybe up until Service Pack 2 came around). And I'm no more in touch with computers than any other average user.

The hardware requirements? Non-issue : XP wasn't the smooth operator the first time around either, and realistically a new PC is on order any time a new OS ships anyway.

Compatibility? No more an issue than moving form 9x to NT. Other than waiting 4 months for my webcam driver after launch, everything installed like a charm, OR Windows itself had software to facilitate it working (Printers, Camera's, Printers)

Usability? Well.. this boils down to people not wanting to learn something new. Moving from 98 to XP was met with the same reaction of being too different (even though it really isn't).

Media hype and self-proclaimed experts wanting to put in there 2cents are a joke. If Mr. PC Expert on such and such website and magazine says there all sorts of problems, but me - joe-schmoe average user has zero issues - I'm more in-tune with computers than he is? Or lucky?

[BigD145 @ Apr 24th 2008 6:54PM]

You're "pretty sure"? Would you care to quantify that?

[mymaclife @ Apr 24th 2008 7:20PM]

The word you're thinking of is 'qualify' not 'quantify'. His statement had no mention of numbers so the word 'quantify is invalid. However of you were in dispute about him using the word 'everyone' then 'quantify' may be allowable. It would have been more appropriate to ask him to 'qualify' or 'prove' it.

[giuliop @ Apr 24th 2008 8:20PM]

"Pretty sure everyone hated XP UNTIL Vista was ready for prime-time. So why does XP get a free pass now."

Because Vista is even worse. Every new Microsoft OS is worse than the previous one: this is why people are complaining. XP, albeit still a bloated OS, is pretty stable, can be run extremely well by today's average machines, and has negligible space requirements by today's standards. With Vista, it's 2001 all over again.

[pkilla @ Apr 25th 2008 5:49PM]

What? Every new version is worse that the previous?

That means vista is not better that Win3.0. You make no sense.
I agree with Memphis, I have had vista on my 3 pcs for over a year now and have not nearly as many issues as when using XP. I will never go back to XP i dread it when I'm forced to use xp (School computers).

[Good_Bytes @ Apr 24th 2008 4:54PM]

Doesn't make much sense, as Vista is perfectly fine on new or older however high end systems (using new standards). So I don't see why they will still sell XP. I think we can all agree that Vista had a rough start, but is fine now.

[FireStar @ Apr 24th 2008 4:58PM]

People that use iGoogle to view their engadget topics just had this one broken when they click on it, as it still links to dull-rumored-to-be..... I just guessed that the link probably changed to dell-rumored-to-be and that's how I found it.

[El Taco @ Apr 24th 2008 5:01PM]

I hope this will stay on the (very) Dull vostro...I mean...Dell vostro

[Tits @ Apr 24th 2008 9:35PM]

I really like my vostro dude... it look like darth vador and its totally silent!

[Ed @ Apr 25th 2008 7:25AM]

The Irony.