Dell has quietly continued to offer XPP even after their announced June 18th deadline.
That's probably because Dell has a stockpile of XP OEM's... and then probably only in the US. Dell Australia is now only advertising/selling Vista machines, and a customer service representative at Microsoft Australia told me that, as of June 18, XP will no longer be made available to PC manufacturers and/or suppliers, period.
Thing is, though, all the earlier incarnations of Windows were eventually withdrawn from sale when a newer version was released (even though support for them continued), so the withdrawal of XP is no different and should have been expected sometime soon after the release of Vista.... moreso after SP1 gave it better stability/reliability, etc.
OK, it's a transition period some aren't liking, but it's inevitable and they need to move on. Everything gets superseded eventually - like you can't go into Ford and order a T Model anymore - so it's either get with the times or get left behind...
I mean, it's not like ya see a lot of T Models on the freeway keeping up with modern day cars, now do ya.
I've been running Vista Ultimate since the first public beta and have had very few problems - in fact, considerably fewer problems than when I upgraded from 98SE to XP - so I'm not complaining that Vista is now MS' new flagship OS. I still run XP in a dual boot configuration, and I will continue to do so because I happen to like XP as well, but for the most part I'm booted into Vista these days cos I find it faster than XP in most instances.
