Technology Info

Dell Inc. will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday, according to the company’s Web site.

Buyers of the low-priced Vostro line of desktops and notebooks will pay $20 to $50 more for Windows XP Professional installed as a “downgrade” from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate than they would for Vista only.

To meet Microsoft Corp.’s June 30 end-of-availability deadline, Dell will stop pre-installing most versions of the seven-year-old operating system after tomorrow. However, it will still be able to ship PCs with XP by taking advantage of the downgrade rights built into Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. Downgrading lets Dell install Windows XP Professional in lieu of Vista, although the newer operating system is still shipped with the machine so that buyers can, if or when they want, transition from XP to Vista. (link)

Asustek Computer plans to add a desktop computer to its Eee PC family that will launch globally in July, the company revealed Thursday.

The new desktop, dubbed Eee Box, is a white mini-PC about the size of a hardback book and will come with either a Linux or Windows XP OS.

Eee Box will come in a range of configurations, including a choice of hard drives from 80G bytes to 250G bytes in size, and allow users to surf the Internet wirelessly via 802.11n Wi-Fi.

The device comes with four USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, two each in front and back, and a slot for MMCs (Multimedia Cards), SD (Secure Digital) cards and Memory Sticks. (link)

Microsoft plans to offer hardware vendors significant price cuts on Windows XP licenses for low-cost computing products, but the deal will only be available for computers with low hardware specs. This tactic is part of Microsoft’s strategy to stifle adoption of Linux by computer manufacturers that are targeting the budget market, where low cost and high flexibility give the open source operating system an edge.

The popularity of the game-changing Asus Eee PC, which ships with a heavily-modified version of the Xandros Linux distribution, spawned a whole new class of inexpensive computers. Other vendors have entered the market with their own competing products, many of which also use the open source operating system. Windows is a poor fit for such computers, which are designed and priced like budget appliances. Vista requires too much hardware overhead, while Windows XP licenses add extra expense to the budget hardware that can be avoided by using Linux. So as products like the Eee bring Linux into homes and schools, Microsoft has struggled to squeeze into the growing budget hardware niche. (link)

A recent statement from anti-malware and threat-detection software manufacturer PC Tools claims that Windows 2000 is a more secure operating system than Windows Vista. The company’s claims, as covered by Infoworld, have attracted a good deal of coverage—no one wants to miss out on a good Microsoft bashing—but an examination of the company’s methodology raises serious concerns about the validity of the conclusions.

According to company CEO Simon Clausen, “recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37 percent more secure than Windows XP.” This certainly sounds dire, and at first glance, the company’s numbers back its statements up. Data reports from the company’s ThreatFire security program state that Vista allowed an average of 639 threats per 1,000 computers “through.” Through, in this case, presumably means that the malware in question successfully installed itself and became active. (link)

Within hours of its release, Microsoft’s Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.

The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft’s Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.

“My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up,” complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. “After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t,” said ‘Doug W’.

Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. “I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals,” wrote ‘Paul’. “Now I can’t get the computer to boot.”

Dozens of other posters reported similar problems. (link)

Microsoft could re-think plans to phase out its Windows XP operating system by June 30 if customers show they want to keep it but so far they have not, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said.

“XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. 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 told a news conference on Thursday.

Microsoft has announced that it will stop licensing Windows XP to computer makers and end retail sales by June 30.

Ballmer said most retailers sold computers with Vista, the latest version of its Windows operating system, and most consumers were choosing to buy Vista. (link)

On Monday, Microsoft released to manufacturers (RTM) the final code for Windows XP SP3. The upgrade provides support for WPA2 and the Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP) used in Windows Vista, among other things. The public version will be available for download via the Web on April 29. Based on our initial installation, the upgrade will be effortless for most Windows XP users.

The last Service Pack for Windows XP, SP2, was released in August 2004. The initial release took some users all night to download and install. The company pushed back the initial public release from June 2004 originally. Despite numerous glitches still present in the code, Windows XP SP2 was formally made public on August 20, 2004, and Microsoft had to work hard to convince users to upgrade. (link)

Microsoft Corp.’s operating systems run most personal computers around the globe and are a cash cow for the world’s largest software maker. But you’d never confuse a Windows user with the passionate fans of Mac OS X or even the free Linux operating system.

Unless it’s someone running Windows XP, a version Microsoft wants to retire.

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can’t be wowed. They complain about Vista’s hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows. (CNN)

Save Windows XP petition

What do you do if your flagship operating system isn’t designed to run well on a popular new class of hardware? It’s a problem currently faced by Microsoft. Budget laptops like the Asus Eee PC with minimal amounts of RAM, relatively slow CPUs, and solid state storage have proven popular, and Vista wasn’t designed to operate well within such hardware confines. In response, Microsoft is reportedly planning to extend the availability of Windows XP for the budget laptop category.

Originally, XP was scheduled to shuffle off this mortal coil this past January 30, but Microsoft relented last fall due to pressure from customers and resellers. Windows XP is now facing a June 30 end, which is the day Microsoft will stop selling the OS to most manufacturers and system builders. Small resellers who build PCs to order will still be able to obtain copies of XP through January 2009, which is just a few months before XP exits the mainstream support phase. Windows XP Started Edition will be available through June 2010. (link)

When we spoke earlier this month with Asus CEO Jerry Shen, he revealed that Windows XP versions of the Eee PC would be coming to market soon. At the time we were so interested in the new 8.9-inch versions that we forgot to ask about the 7-inch version. According to Asus, the Asus Eee PC 4G Windows XP version of its notebook will be hitting the U.S. retail market in the first half of April. The hardware of the system will remain exactly the same, but it will run Windows XP Home. The 7-inch screen system will be available at Best Buy for $399 starting April 9th.

We got our hands on the new XP system a few weeks early, check out our first impressions and a video of the system. (link)