Windows XP Preloading No Longer Allowed

If you remember a while back, Microsoft announced that October 22 2010 would be the last day OEMs would be able to pre-install Windows XP Home on new netbook PCs. Well, that time has come.

Windows XP, the successor to both Windows 2000 and Windows Me, was the first consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture.

When the deadline was announced, Microsoft’s Windows Team Blog had supported the idea by emphasizing that a majority of their customers would not notice much change. Many PC makers have already been actively manufacturing and selling a variety of Windows 7 netbooks since Windows 7 was released in October of 2009.

Coincidently, today also marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of Windows 7. As we all know, Windows 7 is the primary version of Windows which Microsoft is encouraging PC makers to preload on new PCs. And lets not forget the new slate devices that are coming out with Windows 7 preloaded.

With Microsoft selling more than 240 million licenses of Windows 7, it was only a matter of time before Windows XP became a fragment of our past imagination. Windows XP SP2 hit its end of life this past July. We still have until April of 2014 before Windows XP SP3 is no longer supported.