Dell To Offer Win XP On Consumer PCs Again

phalse phace writes "With so many consumers still asking for Windows XP to be loaded on Dell's consumer level PCs, the PC maker has finally decided to offer that as an option. 'Like most computer makers, Dell switched nearly entirely to Vista-based systems following Microsoft's mainstream launch of the operating system in January. However, the company said its customers have been asking for XP as part of its IdeaStorm project, which asks customers to help the company come up with product ideas. Starting immediately, Dell said, it is adding XP Home and Professional as options on four Inspiron laptop models and two Dimension desktops.' The Dell models with the Windows XP option are: Dell Inspiron 1405, 1705, 1505, and 1501; and Dell Dimension E520 and E521."

Re:Well Duh

[El Gigante de Justic]

I've worked with Vista a bit on VMware for work and I think I would eventually want to upgrade to it. I just don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for hardware to really use its full feature set, so I'm waiting at least until SP1 comes out because then the hardware I really want will be less expensive. If you're curious what I was using to run it in VMWare, I was using VMWare Workstation 5.5.3 on a computer with an Intel Core 2 CPU 6600 @ 2.4 Ghz and 2 GB of RAM. I gave 512 MB of RAM to the VM, and the image takes up approximately 12 GB of my hard drive. It runs fine, and I'd say it definitely boots faster than my WinXP VM images. Since the VM image was still an internal beta version I had to do some tweaking to get the sound to work, and I can't run Aero in VM Ware (no hardware graphics acceleration available for the VM) but overall I found a lot of the new features in the OS, such as the new search tools and new Start menu layout to be good improvements overall. Not enough to make me upgrade my current laptop, but nothing that would make me avoid Vista in the future either.

Re:Dell Has Been Offering WinXP

[varmittang]

Businesses still has the ability to purchase XP on basically all machines available. We are talking about consumer machines here, the home and home office area. Not the small business or large business area where your client probably purchased from.

anecdotal evidence...

[evangellydonut]

Just bought a dell laptop yesterday actually. with all the discount specials floating around, some models listed in this article doesn't have the option of XP... Looking at the 1505 model, i was faced with the choice of getting Vista Home and buy a XP Pro OEM license elsewhere, or spend an extra hundred via a different deal to include XP Pro. Former requires much more time from me to d/l and install drivers later... Eventually, the 6400 model came through, which had identical specs as the 1505 and comparable discounts, XP Pro came pre-installed :-D took probably 3 hours of looking around though, but if I had to do all the d/l etc, it'll take 6 hours instead -_-'

In comparison, Lenovo shopping was much more straight-forward, albeit around $200 more expensive...

Re:Dumb People

[Anonymous Coward]

They never stopped offering it to their business customers.

Microsoft runs that show

[puppetluva]

There is no contest here: Microsoft runs the show because they are virtually an OS monopoly for the vast majority of customers that Dell has.

Role play it out. If MS refused to let Dell sell Windows, then Dell would die (or shrink significantly). If Dell refused to sell Windows, then Dell would die (or shrink significantly). Microsoft has plenty of other vendors to sell their OS, Dell doesn't have plenty of in-demand OS's to sell (trust me- I wish linux counted, but that is nowhere near the volume business of selling XP/Vista).

For future scenarios, this is the basic rule of supply chain economics. Think of this chart.
Producer -> MiddleMan -> Distributor

As you go towards the right, your power increases in all cases EXCEPT where someone to the left has a monopoloy (or somewhat close to it). Wallmart is all the way to the right and all they sell are commodities, that's why Wall mart can gouge their suppliers. Dell wishes they were in the same boat, but they have a monopoly to the left.

Re:Well Duh

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Not only was it released years late, but it didn't have ANY of the features that they told us to wait so long for!

WinFS, anyone?

Re:Well Duh

[Balerion]

I had the same problem with the thrashing... disabled everything I could find, and it still wouldn't stop. Eventually I found an option to change how often the index updated under Power Saving, of all places. I'd give you more specific directions, but I'm not running Vista anymore. It's somewhere in the giant tree of options that spills forth when you adjust the power settings.

Re:Dell vs. Microsoft

[jawtheshark]

You will just have to explain my wifes computer that is on 24/7, running XP.... It reboots only when Windows Update requires it to do so. That's not that often.

Of course, it's behind an OpenBSD firewall, but that is of no concern for my wife.

Re:So what does this mean, Vista is a failure?

[Schemat1c]

Vista is a failure for the same reason OS/2 was a failure... APPLICATIONS!

Please don't put Vista in the same boat as OS/2. OS/2 was a wonderful OS for it's time, what killed it was trying to emulate windows instead of just supporting native apps. Vista is failing because it is bloated and buggy with horrible driver support and does nothing that XP already does just fine.

Re:So what does this mean, Vista is a failure?

[MindStalker]

You've been able to get XP through their small buisness site for a long time. Generally the small buisness site is the best way to buy and they don't check to see if your actually a buisness if pay with a credit card.

Re:Wow

[paganizer]

Do NOT tell me that you are implying that Win98 is anything like WinME.
When it comes to usability/ stability in major versions of windows, it goes something like this:
Win2k (any version)
Win2k3
WinXP Pro (only recently was I convinced to not lump XP Pro in with home)
WinNT 4
Win98SE
WinXP Home
WinNT 3.51
Win98
Win95
Vista
Win3.x
WinME
Win2.x
I never tried Windows 1.0