Behind the scenes: Business customers (and many home user customers) demanded that they be allowed to purchase Windows XP Professional into the next 2008 fiscal budget year instead of being forced to "upgrade" to Vista. Why? Vista has much higher hardware requirements, raising costs for companies that simply want to run office applications. It also has (still) some severe compatibility issues with many older printers -- including some commercial grade printers like large scale plotters.
One case in point: last year a client of mine purchased a $50,000 plotter to print out architectural plans. Vista does not support it, and the printer manufacturer has not released Vista drivers.
So this week
Microsoft announced that it will extend the deadline for XP sales to June of 2008. Even that may not be enough to satisfy some customers. There's pressure on MS to extend even further than that . . .
