Dell relents, likely to offer Windows XP as well

It's pretty difficult to make a mega-corporation change its policies. But now people are starting to see that their opinions, voiced loudly enough by a significant chunk of people, can cause companies to re-work their plans and cause changes.
Dell had come out with a policy that all new home systems sold would only be bundled with Windows XP. However, after a site launched by Dell called IdeaStorm that allowed people to ask for changes saw a number of requests for Dell to also release Windows XP, the pressure continued to build up.
Initially, earlier this month, Dell's director of small business marketing laid out the plan under which XP would be offered to small businesses but not to the home users, as the idea was that home users should only have the latest technology, which in this case was Windows XP.
However, Dell seems to have learnt in this case that customers have a mind of their own, and the preference of a number of users was Windows XP, and not Vista. However, this option will be available to only US customers, something that does not make too much sense.
As part of contract with Microsoft, Dell will be able to offer XP to its customers only upto another year, till January 2008. Since Vista requires more computing that XP, there would be a number of users who would prefer to remain on XP rather than get Vista.