News Post

Bye bye Windows XP! Well, maybe not quite yet.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My home laptop is on its last legs. Again.

Before, it was overheating. Now the keyboard has quit working. The company that made it keeps taking it back for repairs, and it’s had as many lives as a cat, but I think this is its ninth. And who knows even an old alley cat that’s made it past nine lives? It’s definitely time to start over as I just can’t see sinking any more money into repairs.

This got me to thinking about what to replace it with. I’m drooling for a new MacBook Air, but that’s another subject for another post on another day. For now I’ve got to decide on a Windows-based laptop for home, and time is running out if I still want to get one with Windows XP rather than be forced to migrate to Vista. Microsoft has decreed that on June 30, 2008 no more new computers will ship with Windows XP.

Why would I not want Vista, the “latest and greatest” Windows operating system, with all it’s new features? Aside from the fact that I don’t see any reason to upgrade something old that works perfectly well just so the company that makes it can sell me something new, it’s mostly because new features mean new complications. Things that used to work, like my existing software, printer and scanner, may not. Or at least not as well as they used to. New complications also mean wasted time. And we all know time is money (or at least the opportunity to do something that’s more fun than figuring out why the printer won’t work anymore.) Ellen Freedman, the Law Practice Management Coordinator of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, wrote an informative post on Vista and the problems some lawyers have had with it several months ago.

So for those who are in the same boat – thinking about buying a new computer soon and wanting Windows XP to be loaded on it if you do – it’s time to act. Dell will not sell any computers with Windows XP after June 18th in order to meet the June 30th shipping cut-off date. Toshiba Direct has a page of notebooks loaded with Windows XP. Neither Gateway nor Lenovo seem to be offering computers loaded with Windows XP, but Lenovo does have a page about how to downgrade Vista to XP on purchases after June 30th.

Time is running out!