HP Re-Marketing Windows 7 As “Back By Popular Demand”, Offering $150 Off Systems
On HP’s welcome page, the main banner says “Back by popular demand” above a deal describing how you can configure a new HP PC with Windows 7 and get up to $150 off.
First of all--that’s a pretty good deal. If you’re in the market for a new PC, you might want to jump on that.
Second, this is not just an inventory flush of old hardware. The deal applies to PCs running 4th-gen Intel Core (Haswell) processors, and the two notebooks among the five PCs in the promotion--the HP Pavilion 15t-n200 and HP ENVY 15t-j100 Quad Edition--are also available elsewhere on the site with Windows 8 configurations.
It appears that the company feels as though Windows 7 is a selling point over Windows 8, which means that as far as HP is concerned, consumers are voting with their wallets, so to speak. That’s bad news for Windows 8 specifically and for Microsoft generally.
Windows 9 is reportedly coming in 2015, and for all concerned--Microsoft, PC vendors, and consumers alike--the sooner the better.