Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:45 pm On September 27, 2007

Microsoft has extended the cut-off as to when PC makers will be allowed to continue to sell Windows XP with new machines.

Until now, January 30, 2008, was the Microsoft-imposed deadline for system vendors to cease offering Windows XP on all new OEM machines. (System builders, a k a white-box vendors, had a longer deadline: January 30, 2009.) But as a result of feedback from customers and partners, Microsoft best price for cialis style=”color: blue”>has extended the OEM and retailer cut-off date for XP to June 30, 2008. That gives consumers five more months to buy XP with new Windows PCs before being required to provide Vista.

The system-builder cut-off date for XP stays at 2009. Vendors selling XP Starter Edition on “ultra-low-cost” machines get a longer reprieve and can sell XP through 2010. And, in spite of the later cutover date for OEMs, nothing changes, in terms of how long Microsoft will support Windows Vista: Microsoft will provide mainstream support through 2012 and extended support through 2017.

Microsoft began paving the way for a longer Vista ramp-up in July, when it began simplifying the process by which its top-tier PC partners could downgrade Vista users to XP.

Microsoft officials insist Vista is selling well and the push back of the cutover deadline shouldn’t be interpreted as Microsoft lessening its commitment to Vista. The company will continue to spend its Windows marketing and support dollars on Vista, not XP.

“The one-year XP transition just turned out to be a little too ambitious,” acknowledged Kevin Kutz, a director in the Windows client unit. Traditionally, Microsoft has given OEMs two years to transition to a new operating system release, Kutz said.

Some industry watchers see the move as evidence of Microsoft is being responsive to customers and partners. Others see it as Microsoft going with the lesser of two evils by giving users not ready to move to Vista a choice other than defecting to Mac OSX or Linux. Even though Microsoft is likely making a few less dollars per copy of XP sold to OEMs than it makes on a copy of Vista, a Windows sale is still a Windows sale.

For my part, I can’t help but wonder if Vista finally and irrevocably pushed Windows into the same category as Microsoft Office, meaning that the cost and potential risks of upgrading have come to outweigh the benefit of new features in the eyes of many customers.

What’s your take? Did Microsoft make XP Service Pack (SP) 2 too good for its own good? Or is Vista just an off release that Microsoft should hurry up and replace — and definitely sooner than 2010, when it is slated to roll out Windows 7?

Pasted from <http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=759&tag=nl.e539>

Microsoft caught doing stealth updates

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com

Published: September 13, 2007, 6:34 PM EST

Software giant Microsoft has been caught updating files on both Windows XP and Windows Vista without displaying the usual notification or permission dialog box – even if the user had previously disabled automatic updates. Microsoft, however, calls it built-in behavior and no cause for alarm.

Scott Dunn of “Windows Secrets”, reports nine files in XP and Vista have been altered by Windows Update in what he calls a stealth move by Microsoft. The updates are upgrades to the Windows Update service itself, and are not harmful to the system. However, the tactics used by Microsoft to perform them are comparable to those used by spyware companies, thus raising some concerns among the privacy minded.

So what is happening here? Windows Update program manager Nate Clinton explains in a blog post:

To ensure on-going service reliability and operation, we must also update and enhance the Windows Update service itself, including its client side software. These upgrades are important if we are to maintain the quality of the service. […]The point best place to buy cialis of this explanation is not to suggest that we were as transparent as we could have been; to the contrary, people have told us that we should have been clearer on how Windows Update behaves when it updates itself.

This is not the first time Microsoft has pushed updates out to users who prefer to test and install their updates manually. Back in October it was discovered that the anti-piracy program Windows Genuine Advantage was being downloaded and installed without asking users for their consent.

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