TAG | XP's last chance saloon at Dell |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 24 June 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 As far as I can see, the only Dell desktop that comes with the option of an XP downgrade is the XPS 630. The standard configuration is Vista Home Premium, but no downgrade rights are available. Swapping Vista Home Premium with Vista Business gets you XP downgrade rights and pushes up the cost by a modest $A27.50.Ah, but perhaps you have visions of running Vista somewhere down the track, and you think you'll want a Home Premium feature that's missing from Business? Windows Media Center perhaps? Sorry, no can do. Instead, you'll have to choose Vista Ultimate with the XP downgrade rights - curiously enough, that attracts exactly the same $A123.20 premium as opting for Ultimate alone. The root of the problem appears to be the way Microsoft chooses to produce multiple versions of its operating systems with overlapping feature sets supposedly to meet the needs of different market segments, and with limits on the ability to crossgrade between versions (eg, going from XP Home to XP Professional is out, so you can't go from Vista Home to XP Professional, even if you really wanted XP Home). But what if Microsoft decided it could more simply address all these segments with one version for desktops and notebooks, and another for servers? Windows Vista and Windows Server, perhaps - or is that too much like Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server? What's stopping Microsoft from taking that route? The cynical might say it would reduce the company's ability to squeeze the last dollar out of each customer segment.
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