XP deadline extended toward launch of Windows 7

Microsoft has acknowledged that it will allow system builders to pay for installed copies of XP through May 30, rather than shutting down the pipeline this month.

If you order from your preferred vendor by Jan. 31, you may be able to rely on XP for new systems almost right up until the long-awaited Windows 7 ships, an event that's expected to occur within a few months.

Vista is looking more and more like the Edsel of the computer industry. Presumably as a result of slow uptake by corporations and individual users, Microsoft last month confirmed that it will allow OEMs and smaller-scale "system builders" to pay as late as May 30, 2009, for copies of XP ordered by Jan. 31. (Vendors won't have to pay Microsoft until the systems sell. MS previously had been expecting payments for copies of XP by Jan. 31.)

The details of Microsoft's new, flexible inventory program were first reported on the ChannelWeb site.

Combine this news with reports that Windows 7 may ship as early as mid-2009, and it looks like Microsoft is ready to relegate Vista to the binary scrapheap. Maybe the company's recent $300 million marketing push for Vista wasn't so successful as Microsoft claims it was.

As Mary Jo Foley states in her All About Microsoft blog, vendors of low-budget PCs such as netbooks were already being allowed to sell new systems based on XP through June 30, 2010, or one year after Windows 7 ships — whichever came first. Microsoft's new policy now gives a reprieve to builders of mainstream computers, and to end users who want to buy systems running Windows XP, not Vista, indefinitely or until Windows 7 is a proven commodity.