More than 8 months have passed since the official release of Windows Vista to the public and yet customers, who have a choice, are overwhelmingly choosing Windows XP.

White box PC builders state that Vista has increased their business by forcing many who would normally buy a branded machine to their shops, because with the system builder comes the ability to get XP.  Those builders who responded to ComputerWorld are reporting from 80 - 95% of the builds are using XP, with very rare instances of customers wishing to use Vista.

System hardware requirements, unsupported hardware, and system bugs are still being cited as reasons to not upgrade to Vista. Many of the system builders responding are still citing much of their time as being spent downgrading Vista installed on branded systems.

ComputerWorld reports that some of the large vendors are shipping PCs which have Vista pre-installed, but are including XP discs in the package, to make downgrading easier.

Microsoft is cutting off the ability of the large vendors to install XP after January 31st of next year, while smaller builders will be able to install XP for another full year. This should lead to a surge of business for the small builder, as many businesses are in the cycle for hardware refresh or replacement, yet testing of current software that is used on Vista has not been completed to their satisfaction.

My guess is that the system builder that is able to deliver 100 to 500 PCs configured identically in short order will be seeing huge gains in the first months of the new year.

The ComputerWorld survey notes the wishes of the large vendors for Microsoft to lift the deadline on XP installs, citing customer resistance to Vista as a major reason to change a long standing policy.

Microsoft is surely betting heavily on the release of Service Pack 1 to allay the fears of many, and turn away the wrath of disappointed early adopters. The first quarter of the new year will no doubt be very interesting for all involved in this little drama.

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[tags] Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows XP, downgrading, Service Pack 1, white box vendors, large vendors, Hewlitt Packard, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Sony, Acer, XP system discs [/tags]