Microsoft Extends Windows XP Downgrade to 2020

Another decade of Windows XP -- who's excited?!

While the consumer and enthusiast are now happily moving to Windows 7, businesses are still chugging along on Windows XP. This would present a problem for businesses buying and installing new computers in the workplace if not for the Windows XP downgrade program available to OEM Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate SKUs.

Originally, these downgrade rights were to disappear once Microsoft ships the first Service Pack in 2011, but upon the release of the SP1 beta, Microsoft announced that it would extend the XP downgrade period through to January 2020 for the Professional and January 2015 for the Ultimate edition (dates according to Computerworld).

"This will help maintain consistency for downgrade rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle," wrote Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, in an entry on the company blog. "As a result, the OEM versions of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate will continue to include downgrade rights to the similar versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional.  Going forward, businesses can continue to purchase new PCs and utilize end user downgrade rights to Windows XP or Windows Vista until they are ready to use Windows 7. Enabling such rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle will make it easier for customers as they plan deployments to Windows 7."

Microsoft made this change to help ease confusion for businesses getting new PCs but aren't able to make the switch just yet. With the extension of the downgrade rights, Microsoft will still be able to sell a Windows license and businesses can still run Windows XP.

LeBlanc added, "Our business customers have told us that the removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing, given the rights change would be made for new PCs preinstalled with Windows 7 and managing a hybrid environment with PCs that have different end-user rights based on date of purchase would be challenging to track."

74% of Enterprise PCs Are Still Running Win XP

Microsoft recently announced that it had hit a huge milestone with Windows 7: they had sold 150 million copies. However, despite this success in the mainstream consumer market, the adoption rate among enterprise customers has been slow.

Microsoft this week revealed that the vast majority of businesses are still running on Microsoft's nine-year-old OS, Windows XP. Speaking yesterday at the Windows Partner Conference, Corporate Vice President of Windows, Tammi Reller, admitted that nearly three quarters (74 percent) of business PCs are still running XP. Reller also revealed that, at 4.4 years, the average age of a business PC is the highest it's ever been.

Though business adoption has been slow, things should look up soon if a recent study by Dimensional Research is to be believed. Back in April the firm conducted a survey of nearly 1,000 IT professionals and found worries about upgrading to Windows 7 had decreased while worries about maintaining Windows XP had increased.

The survey found that 87 percent of respondents planned to deploy Windows 7. This is compared to 47 percent who had plans to deploy Vista at a comparable point after its release. Further, 46 percent of the total surveyed revealed they had plans to migrate even before the release of SP1. Dimensional Research said that, while 25 percent of people expressed concerns about Windows 7 performance, this is down from 47 percent last year.

Although 60 percent of the respondents were worried about the cost and overhead of migrating to Windows 7, that figure was down from 72 percent last year. Similarly, 40 percent of the respondents said that they're worried about the hassles of maintaining Windows XP as it gets older. This figure is up from 28 percent last year.

Intel Says That Celeron Will Continue to Live On

Long live the Celeron!

Earlier on, we heard from Taiwanese sources that Intel will be phasing out the Celeron CPU brand sometime in 2011 as things move towards Sandy Bridge. No so, says Intel; the Celeron the will live on.

"The rumor is not true, Intel has no plan to phase out the Celeron brand in 2011. Intel Celeron processors continue to provide a low-cost computing solution for basic computing needs," wrote Barry Sum, an Intel spokesman in Hong Kong, in an e-mail response to questions from IDG.

X-bit labs still claims that it has seen roadmaps that show that the Celeron will not be moving to a Nehalem-based architecture, leaving some to wonder what will happen to the Celeron brand when the Core 2 family is no longer in production.

Right now, Intel scales its product offerings with the Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Core 2, and Core i brandings. While it may be a bit crowded now, the eventual drop of the Core 2 Duo products will give Intel a little more room to keep the Celeron in the lineup.

Stiletto Shoe Speakers Pump Out Six Watts

You can even make them play heel-clicking sounds, if that floats your boat.

The shoe speakers are a pair that are actually USB-powered speakers. Like most other speaker sets, they draw power from the nearest USB port, and receive audio through a 3.5mm jack. The speakers look like shoes well enough that it's a not a leap to consider wearing them (though you shouldn't), though we find it disgusting if you plan to take them off during work and place them on your desk.

These Stiletto Shoe Speakers are of course available in a variety of colors. Buyers can choose a red, pink, or black pair to suit their wardrobe—or desktop—fancy. The only problem? A relatively weak six-watt output, and a limited 200Hz to 5000Hz frequency range, not to mention the £25 ($37.50) price tag.

Intel May Soon Abandon Celeron Microprocessors

Those Celerons aren't going to be kept up in the technology line up.

Intel's Celeron brand was mocked for its vegetative name when the CPU launched, but eventually the last laugh belonged to the chip as it proved to be a formidable overclocker and value proposition as the Celeron 300A wrote itself into the history books.

The Celeron brand eventually made its way into notebooks as entry-level solutions for mainstream computers. Sadly, the Celeron never achieved any sort of cult status as an overclocker in the mobile space, but it's still been a nice little chip that got the job done for most casual computer users. But that time could be coming to an end.

DigiTimes once again cites Intel's partners as telling it that the Celeron brand will be phased out in 2011. In its place, Intel will fill the gap with low-end Pentium and dual-core Atom offerings.

Intel denied that it would be phasing out the Celeron at all, but X-bit labs claimed that roadmaps it had seen showed that the Celeron wouldn't be receiving any upgrades to Clarkdale/Nehalem or Sandy Bridge cores. This could mean that once Intel phases out Core 2 technology, the Celerons will go with it.