As a sop to the millions of people who have shunned Vista and prefer XP, Microsoft decided to allow manufacturers to offer XP as a ‘downgrade right’ – Dell have rebadged this and are offering Vista as a ‘Bonus Disk’, implying (quite correctly) that it doesn’t see XP as a downgrade at all.

In fact, Dell’s blog is fullsome in its praise of XP and calls Vista ‘its harshly debated successor’.

Looking for a new computer? Get a Dell.

It claims that it wants to show a clear timeline in the release of its products – it seems more likely that its desperately trying to dig itself out of a hole.

Windows Vista has hardly been greeted with acclaim, not least by corporate customers who can, quite rightly, see little benefit in ‘upgrading’ from XP, so in order to encourage sales Microsoft have tried the carrot and stick approach – withdrawing XP from the market and promising Windows 7 in 2009 with an easy transition from Vista to Windows 7.

Unfortunately for them it isn’t working – on the one hand customer demand has meant that they have vacillated over the withdrawal of XP and although it is being officially withdrawn from sale at the end of this month, there are so many ‘exceptions’ – system builders that will still be able to install it – that effectively anyone will be able to get hold of  a copy if they want to, and on the other many companies are just skipping the Vista step completely and waiting for Windows 7.

So, a little more time for them to get Windows 7 right, and in a few years time Vista will be seen for what it is – a poor bloated operating system with few advantages over XP,  badly implemented, and for most people a totally unnecessary expense.