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	Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth - owners - The Computer Factory What’s up with XP, Vista and Win 7? In January 2007 Microsoft released Windows Vista and cut the supply of Windows XP licenses to the major PC sellers (Dell, HP/Compaq, et al). This is the standard practice when Microsoft introduces a new operating system. They burn the lifeboats so there’s no turning back. Microsoft’s virtual PC OS monopoly denies PC sellers any alternative. Microsoft is free to force-feed its newest OS to the public by forcing major brands to use their latest OS exclusively. The entire PC industry must adapt hardware and software to the new OS. This tactic gives Microsoft millions of somewhat reluctant users to help find all the bugs. Microsoft is able to enforce its marketing strategies on large PC producers through OEM contract terms. Fortunately independent PC builders like The Computer Factory don’t have OEM agreements with Microsoft. While we pay considerably more for our OS, we are not beholden to Microsoft and can build PCs with any OS our customer’s desire. Thus we were able to build XP PCs throughout the entire three year Vista train wreck. When a new OS is a genuine improvement over the old (as was the case with Win 95, 98, XP and Win 7), Microsoft’s marketing tactics are fairly painless. As the new OS proves trustworthy, new PC sales pick up and users begin to upgrade their older PCs. Life is good until Microsoft does it all over again. When a new OS turns out to be a lemon, it’s a different story. ME and later Vista ran into severe problems upon release but Microsoft wouldn’t allow the major brand PC makers to go back to the older, more reliable OS. PC sales went in the toilet. The ME calamity lasted only a year because Microsoft introduced XP in 2001. The Vista fiasco started in Jan 2007 and persisted for nearly three years. As the word spread that Vista was a turkey, upgrade packages and new PC sales dried up. When businesses shunned the Vista PCs, Microsoft was forced to invent “Vista downgrade rights,” (DGR). DGR PCs came with a Vista Professional license sticker on the outside but a free factory installation of XP Professional on the inside. This ploy allowed users to keep XP while allowing Microsoft to boast publicly that Vista sales were on track. They were lying, Win 7 replaced Vista in Dec 2009 and is essentially a cleaned up, debugged version of Vista. In Dec 2009, as Win 7 was being released, XP held a 71 % share of installed PC OS base. At that time, three years after its release, Vista held only 19% of the installed base. The remaining 10% was shared between Win 2000; win 98, Linux and Apple’s OS. The biggest problem facing Win 7 has been getting XP users to switch. Today XP has a 63% share, Vista holds 14% and Win 7 has garnered a 13% share. The significance here is that while Vista has lost 26% of its installed base to Win 7, XP has lost only 12% of its installed base. Vista is dead, Win 7 is coming on strong but XP just keeps rolling along. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” keeps many XP users in the fold. XP is still somewhat faster than Win 7 and requires less power in terms of RAM and CPU resources. In addition, all applications and devices run in XP but there are still business and home applications that are incompatible with Win 7. Recognizing these issues, Microsoft came up with two ways to allow Win 7 PCs to enjoy the speed and compatibility of XP. With Win 7 Pro, users can download an emulation utility that accommodates all XP applications. Alternatively, “Win 7 Pro” also allows users to order a PC with a Win 7 Pro license on the outside and XP on the inside (it’s called Win 7 DGR). This is an excellent alternative for a business or home user who wants to continue using XP now but may wish to move to Win 7 in the future. It provides two OS for the price of one. This program will be terminated when the Win 7 service pack 1 is released later this year. Because major brand PC sellers buy their PCs overseas they can’t offer users the option to save money by using an OS that they already own. In most cases the also cannot offer the Win 7 DGR program without added costs and significant delay. Because we build our own Desktop PCs and stock Win 7/ XP DGR notebook PCs, we can provide any OS option without delay or extra cost.