Amazon Software Editors' Blog

Inevitably, when a new version of an operating system is released, there’s a little resistance. Users initially complain about slowness, bugs, and all that other annoying stuff that precedes the first few updates. This resistance seems to have been particularly strong with Windows Vista, with a critical mass of users (and those crucial enterprise and business types) opting to stay with XP.

In the past few weeks things reached a sort of fever pitch. There was this survey, revealing a third of Vista users downgraded to XP. Taiwan is now looking into a lawsuit to hold onto the old OS. Microsoft is playing both sides. On the one hand they’re after naysayers with the “Mojave Experiment” campaign, which Mike Elgan compares to being “punk’d” by Ashton Kutcher here. On the other hand they’ve started a blog to keep track of Windows 7 developments, fueling speculation that the software giant is nearly ready to forget about Vista itself.

So what’s going on? Maybe people just aren’t ready for a new machine just yet. Maybe some are simply weary given everything they’ve heard or read (which WordPlop calmly addresses here). Maybe Microsoft just waited too long to follow up XP, letting everyone get too attached. To wit, for XP-sentimental Vista users, there’s silliness like this. It’s so hard to let go. ...

Whatever your reasoning, if you plan to sit it out for a while and install XP on your machine, you’ve come to the right place. Who’s got the XP? Amazon’s got the XP.

Now is probably a good time to tell you this is being typed on a Windows ’95 machine. I could never let go of that first version of the Start Button, so pixelated, so beautiful. OK, that’s a lie. It’s a Mac.

~ Jason P.