Microsoft XP support

[Paul Findon]

On 28 Apr 2008, at 12:38, Austin Meredith wrote:

> According to this morning's newspaper, Microsoft plans to discontinue
> its support of XP on June 30th. Is this something we should be  
> discussing?

According to this report, Dell, HP, and Lenovo may continue to offer  
XP under the terms of a "downgrade license."
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7370821.stm>

Adobe discontinued Mac FrameMaker exactly four years ago but we still  
use today, so Microsoft discontinuing XP shouldn't affect existing  
users too much. Anyone looking to buy a copy in the future, however,  
may have to pay over the odds. In fact, eBay speculators are probably  
buying up copies as we speak.

If Microsoft announced that it was no longer going to provide  
activation keys for Windows XP, now that really would cause a  
kerfuffle. Kind of like what's happened with their PlaysForSure music  
service. Ouch! The dangers of DRM...
<http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/index.cfm?newsid=21107>

Paul