Dell brings back XP due to customer demand.
Color me unsurprised.
That’s the beauty of it - it doesn’t really do anything.
I bought a Dell 640m laptop earlier this year and didn’t have XP as an OS option. I got Vista. There is no learning curve and it’s basically like XP only Vista has a cool-looking clock and some other stuff, and XP doesn’t. And Vista has a tendency to not play well with Firefox.
BFD. There were more changes in Office 2007.
Robin
Yes, but I’ve found the changes in Office 2007 to actually be helpful. Vista (from what little I’ve used it) appears to be nothing but a big annoying pile of crap.
I’d say a big change is, at least based on what I’m reading, is that I ought to have 2 gig of ram for it to run smoothly. There’s an added cost I’m not thrilled about, as 1 gig with XP has been more than adequate for my computing needs.
I will admit I was not happy when I learned my new laptop would come with Vista or nothing, but now that I have it, it has grown on me. I don’t think that it is a great OS, or even a wonderful one, but it has nice things about it like any other.
I can understand a need to still allow a choice between XP and Vista though, because many people prefer what they are used to instead of something new. That is never a surprise - change is accepted by some and rejected by others - but I am kind of glad to see the offer being made.
On a side note - when does Vista not play well with Firefox? I installed Firefox and Thunderbird nearly 2 hours after I came home with the computer and have never once had a problem with that. Am I missing something?
(Also, am I the only one that kind of misses 3.1 and 95?)
Brendon Small
C:\DOS\Run Dos Run…
I doubt anyone will ever miss 95 but I’d give anything for the days of a command prompt interface. And very little need for tech support. Those were the days when you could probably get away with saying something like “Lady pack up your computer and take it back to where you got it from and tell them your too stupid to own a computer.” 
As for Vista/Dell thing well color me surprised that people who have no idea what the difference between a system bus and a school bus is, want to stay with what they know.
A friend got a new Dell laptop and I tried to use it but found nothing but problems. I thought it might be Vista or it had sensed I was a Mac user… same difference I suppose.
My users shouldn’t have to know what a bus is, or an interrupt. Their PC should work like a toaster. Bread in, toast out.
Of course, it won’t, there’s too much going on, and a new OS can do things an old one can’t. But their new and better toast should be as easy to make as possible.
What about Linux?
Ah, never mind.
I agree, though I do think that people should at least have a basic understanding of how things are working and why they are doing what they do. For many this is not even a consideration.
I want it to do ‘x’.
Well your going to need…
I don’t want to know I just want it to do ‘x’
… But if I can explain…
No I just want it to do ‘x’…
Well then your going to have to spend $xxx.xx for…
But I just brought a computer. What did I pay all this money for.
I guess you’ve never had that conversation then. I built computers for 15 years and in the early days I would hardly ever have to explain the system to the buyer. I no longer build computers. I now drive a tractor around in circles at least there is a point to driving the tractor around in circles. 
This kinda reminds me of the story of the woman who called her ISP for tech support and wanted to know why every time she tried to connect to the internet the phone screamed into her ear. Then after having someone explain what the internet was all about, goes on a rant about after paying $30 per month for the internet that she shouldn’t have to spend any more money on a computer to get online.
There’s also the sizeable chunk of businessmen/women who want to buy a laptop/desktop for themselves but need to be able to run their business’ software on it, and many corporations are not Vista-ready yet. It takes time to make everything play nicely with an OS, even if the end result looks (relatively) seemless to the end user.
Now she can do it on her cell phone. Soon, her toaster.
Sure, they should know the difference between say logging onto the network and to a Windows workstation, or their local drive and a network folder, but many of them don’t understand.
Is PowerShell not sufficient for your needs?
Of course, that’s also an indication they really oughta install a few more cooling fans in the case.
That’s not really the issue at hand. XP is more reliable and has less overhead. As a gamer, the same system will run the same game better, generally, under XP. That’s bad.
Plus, working in technical support, we’ve noticed a major trend of Vista “issues”. It’ll probably all get hammered out in a service pack or something, but for now, I wouldn’t recommend Vista.
I guess this puts some weight on joke that the White House’s new motto is “Still more popular than Vista”
And there will be better Vista games that won’t run on XP, just like there were XP games that wouldn’t run on 98.
You make a very good point, wait to buy the damn thing until you have to, and there are service packs out.
In three weeks I am going to buy a MacBook Pro, and I want to get Windows XP Pro to be installed on a separate disk partition, so that I can run it both alone and in a virtual machine under Parallels on Mac OS X. (I need it for connecting to work, and to run certain software.) Vista’s license agreement forbids running it under a VM unless you get the Really Expensive Version.
I am finding it more and more difficult to get XP Pro; the big retailers seem to have yanked it in favour of Vista. XP Pro is still listed on the Canadian Future Shop website, but my friend says they no longer sell it. Grr. I may have to go elsewhere to buy it.
Ironically, many Mac users really seem to like Vista for some reason.