Save Windows XP! The Clock Is Ticking!

January 22, 2008 Microsoft plans to end most sales of Windows XP on June 30, despite a deep reluctance by many business and individuals about moving to Vista . InfoWorld believes such an expensive, time-consuming shift with problematic benefits should not be forced on Windows users, so they have decided to rally XP users to demand that XP be kept available.

Microsoft will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008 , forcing users to move to Vista . Don’t let that happen!

Join the 41,185 people so far who have signed InfoWorld’s online petition to demand that Microsoft not stop OEM and shrink wrapped sales of Windows XP as planned on June 30, 2008, but instead keep it available indefinitely.

Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don’t see a need to change to Vista . It’s like having a comfortable apartment that you’ve enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place — even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) — just doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’ll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don’t have any other reason to move.

That’s exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista . For most of us, there’s really no reason to move to it — yet we don’t have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft). Come June 30, however, even that option goes away.

So what to do? Let Microsoft decide where your personal and enterprise software “lives”? Or send a loud and clear message that you don’t want to move?

InfoWorld is going for the loud-and-clear option. Sign the petition, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep XP available indefinitely. Not for another six months or a year but indefinitely. Ak your friends and colleagues to join in, too. Just point them to SaveXP.com for a quick link to the petition.

Don’t think Microsoft will listen? Consider this: Although Microsoft denies that anything is wrong with Vista or that most people don’t want it, the company has already postponed XP’s demise by six months. That’s a start, but it’s just not good enough.

Microsoft doesn’t have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista , or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we’ll all actually want.

There’s a precedent for that, too: In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn’t support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium’s failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.

Make sure your voice is heard by Microsoft. Sign the petition to save XP today and InfoWorld will present it to Microsoft.

http://www.savexp.com