XP still outselling Vista

HP says loophole helping businesses avoid new OS

8 August 2008 11:50 GMT / By Stuart Miles

HP has said that it is selling more copies of Windows XP than Vista even though the new operating system even though they are supposedly not allowed to.

According to APC Magazine, Jane Bradburn, market development manager of commercial notebooks for HP Australia has said the company was still selling machines with XP pre-loaded, but issuing a Vista licence in the box to get around the restriction.

"From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence," she said.

"However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today."

The news means that the success of Vista could be even less than previously thought as each licence in the box would imply a computer running Vista, even if that computer has never had Windows Vista installed.