June 18th: Last day to buy a Dell with XP, penalty free
When the clock strikes midnight on June 18th, Dell will discontinue its sales of XP systems. The move allows Dell to meet the imposed June 30th deadline which requires the industry to cease shipment of XP machines. That is, unless you're in the market for a netbook or nettop in which case Microsoft is happy for vendors to continue shipping XP in order to stifle Linux's penetration into consumer computing give consumers a consistent user experience. After June 18th, certain Dell products will still be offered with a factory installed, XP Professional "downgrade" at the cost to you or your business of an unused Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate license and presumably, a small fee as we heard earlier. However, according to TGDaily, the downgrade will only be offered on XPS 630 and XPS 720 H2C desktops or the M1730 laptop -- not the 11 laptops and 10 desktops Dell currently ships with an XP option.
Update: Details are now posted at Dell.
