Microsoft has announced that manufacturers will be able to sell Windows on “nettops” — or low-cost desktops — in another move that looks set to keep XP alive for several years yet.
At the Computex trade fair in Taiwan this week, Microsoft said that after offering Windows for notebooks — or ultra-low-cost PCs intended for students and first-time PC customers in aborning markets — it will also offer the operating system on “nettops” until June 2010.microsoft-windows-xp-pro
The consort would not further specify which edition of Windows will be used on nettops, but it has been widely reported that the move represents an spreading of the lifespan of XP, which had been regular for execution later this year for mainstream PCs.
Cheaper machines, however, face no such threat. In April Microsoft said that it would earmark XP Home to still be oversubscribed on ultra-low-cost PCs until 30 June 2010 or one year after the start of Windows 7, whichever is later. Today’s announcement suggests that Microsoft will additionally earmark nettops to be oversubscribed with XP in the foreseeable future.
“Customers and partners have made it country to us that they want Windows on their notebooks and nettops,” Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of the OEM division at Microsoft, said in a statement.
However, grabbing some of the new aborning market also figures in Microsoft’s thinking: “The marketplace for this aborning class of computers has expanded, and Microsoft and its partners are today seeing interest in these devices in developed markets as well, especially as consort devices in multi-PC households,” the consort said.