Microsoft has sent out a reminder to OEMs that, as of October 22, they won’t be able to pre-install Windows XP Home on new netbook PCs. This cut-off date was announced during the launch of win 7 on 22 oct 2009, where Microsoft promised to support Win XP Home for another year.
Windows XP has been out a long time now since its launch in August 2001 and has been very popular among laptops and computers for a number of years. Microsoft is soon ending support for XP service pack 2 next month. However, XP SP3 will be supported till April 2014 at which point you should have upgraded by then anyway.
Microsoft has a windows 7 upgrade for netbook users currently using Windows XP. The upgrade can be downloaded directly so netbook users without CD-ROM drives can still use windows 7.
Now initially, or at least back when XP was given the extension I had thought it necessary. But now at this point in netbooks and available options for Windows it hardly seems needed anymore. After all, Windows 7 has come a long way.
According to a post on Microsoft Windows Blog, as of April 2010, 81 percent of netbooks sold at retail in the U.S. came with Windows 7 preinstalled.
Win XP is much too old now, and outside of controlled enterprise environments, I personally don’t think XP should be installed in new computers at all.
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