To be fair to Dell, this is due to Microsoft's current initiative to do away with XP in favor of Vista. Also, Buyers must upgrade to a higher level of Vista first in order to be able to "downgrade" to XP - BUT they are getting both OS's and buying a better, non-crippled version of Vista (and XP Pro, not Home) that they can revert to once they are ready - instead of buying an XP PC now and needing Vista next year for an additional $129+. Normally, Vostro PC's come with XP Home and the Pro upgrade is about $99. Also, the average user wouldn't necessarily need Vista Business or Ultimate.

Microsoft's push for Vista adoption, Round 2 :-)

This portion of the article is key -

"To meet Microsoft Corp.'s June 30 end-of-availability deadline, Dell will stop pre-installing most versions of the seven-year-old operating system after tomorrow. However, it will still be able to ship PCs with XP by taking advantage of the downgrade rights built into Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. Downgrading lets Dell install Windows XP Professional in lieu of Vista, although the newer operating system is still shipped with the machine so that buyers can, if or when they want, transition from XP to Vista.

Vista Business and Vista Ultimate are the only generally-available editions that allow downgrades, and they can be downgraded only to Windows XP Professional. Under Microsoft's licensing terms, the less-expensive XP Home cannot be installed as a downgrade."

DD: You're right Will. This is because of Microsoft. I wasn't trying to imply that Dell is being unfair, but I'm sure it's still bound to make some consumers angry.