Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

After a barrage of complaints, Dell is to once again offer Windows XP on new systems, responding to angry online customers. This reverses a Vista-only policy Dell moved to since the release of Microsoft's latest 800 pound gorilla of an operating system. Friends of mine have told me it’s a memory hog, needed at least 2 MB of memory to run at reasonable speeds. The most popular Vista-phobic post and the one that got the company's attention is "Don’t eliminate XP just yet" which received 12,228 supporting "points." The scoring process for these “points” is very convoluted. I don’t understand it, but it does mean a lot of people responded to this post, or some lunatic responded a lot. Meanwhile, Microsoft in its usual fashion is saying nothing in the hope it will all just go away… Which it will in a few months, as manufacturers will only be able to pre-install XP on systems until Jan. 31, 2008 when Microsoft will force them to switch to Vista no matter what customers ask for. I believe that’s Microsoft’s version of “Freedom of choice!”

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Hey... Vista or Siberia... Make up your mind!