Originally posted on June 24, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
Microsoft has officially confirmed that it will stop supporting Windows XP beginning on the 30th of June. But a small oversight on the part of Microsoft would mean that you’ll still be able to buy the OS throug OEMs or original equipment manufacturers.
The loophole is actually the same reason retailers like newegg.com has been able to sell extremely discounted OEM copies of Windows Vista (up to 50 percent off) to consumers. What happens here is that even though Microsoft will stop selling Windows XP for retail on June 30, it will license it to PC OEMs. The said OEMs, on the other hand, are being asked to stop selling them to retail after the deadline set by Microsoft. The contentious issue happens after the deadline, when XP is officially done being sold to retail but with Microsoft relaxing its restriction allowing affordable (or cheap) nettops or netbooks to use XP, essentially allowing the system to be sold after all.
All the legal acrobatics to exploit something is just too comical sometimes.