Starting June 30th 2008, you will no longer be able to purchase Windows XP or get XP on a new machine. Things are going to get interesting to say the least. We rarely purchase new machines for clients that have Vista since everyone, rightfully so, wants to stick with XP.
We all knew it was going to happen at some point. Microsoft was pushing to retire XP the day Vista was released. There are still a lot of problems with Vista, especially if your computer is not brand new.
Microsoft will be supporting XP until 2014 so no need to worry about your current machines and having to upgrade them to Vista unless you want to.
You do have downgrade rights though. You can purchase Vista and then downgrade to the appropriate version of XP if needed. Details below for Microsoft’s rules of the road. At least you do have an option to get the XP licensing, but now you need to re-image every computer you get to re-install XP on it. This is not a big deal for larger organizations since usually each new machine is wiped with a new corporate standard image, but for smaller organizations, this will be painful and expensive to have your technology team do this each time. If you do not have imaging software to do this, you might want to get some to make your life a lot easier.
It looks like we will all be enjoying Vista soon enough so get ready!
