Welcome to Smuggle Me

I just read that the Windows XP OEM will end on June 30, 2008. The fact of the matter is…I don’t really care. No, I’m not a Mac or Linux fanboi (although they are both very nice and workable offerings). I’m just not concerned, because Windows stopping the OEM license doesn’t mean that XP isn’t going to be around for a long time to come.

I still have a friend who swears by Windows 2000. Despite my personal dislike for Windows 2000, I’ve installed it on a few “throw away” laptops for my little sisters to use. Windows 2000 hasn’t been offered for how long? Eternity in tech terms. However, I had no problem finding a CD and license to install it for my sisters. Windows XP will be no different.

Until If Vista can finally get things together, then it might catch on and start to take some share from XP. If it doesn’t, then people will continue to use XP for the foreseeable future. It won’t be that hard to find an XP install CD, legally or illegally.

So, all those worried about Vista and not wanting to switch from XP, stop it. There’s nothing to worry about. Go back to worrying about getting the US troops back from Iraq, because that’s going to happen before Windows XP stops being the main O/S people use.

Update: This post on Techcrunch made me think about how much the O/S matters. It’s true that a lot of things can be done with a web browser. Certainly gives pause for thought, but realistically corporations have thousands of products that run clients on Windows O/S. The majority of people use the web browser, Office Documents (which the web still hasn’t completely replaced), and at least one other major application to do their job (and many more than one application). Microsoft will still be dominate on desktops for a while.