XP Starter Edition...Give me some of that!

Mary Jo Foley wrote a piece today about Microsoft's "stay of execution for Windows XP." In particular, she is referencing the company's June 30th deadline for OEMs to pre-install Windows XP on their systems. After that point, OEMs must install some version of Windows Vista. So far, the company has extended this deadline for manufacturers distributing systems to emerging markets, but will only allow the use of Windows XP Starter Edition.

As Mary points out,

From Microsoft’s September 27, 2007, press release:

“(S)ince some of the systems that ship in emerging markets don’t meet the requirements for Windows Vista, we will be extending availability of Windows XP Starter Edition to June 30, 2010. This will allow our OEM partners who sell PCs in emerging markets more opportunity to offer genuine Windows licenses.”

The new question that company watchers are asking this week is whether Microsoft will extend this 2010 date to cover “low-cost” PCs — like the Asus Eee ultra-cheap laptop — even if those PCs aren’t running XP Starter Edition.

Similarly, this means that systems like Intel's Classmate that currently run Windows XP quite handily (and have been distributed, tested, and marketed with full-blown XP), would need to be sold beginning in June with XP Starter Edition. One word: Ubuntu.

Mary correctly points out that Microsoft is in a bit of a sticky wicket: either it shuts itself out of this market by preventing manufacturers of non-Vista capable hardware from distributing Windows XP, limits users to a stripped down version of an aging OS and/or gives XP another stay of execution. For those of us in Ed Tech eagerly awaiting a new crop of Atom-based cheap laptops, as well as the 2nd generation Intel Classmate making its way to mature markets, it's certainly time to look elsewhere if Microsoft's only offering will be XP Starter Edition.