Windows XP: what the PC vendors say

PC vendors are pinning their hopes in Windows XP to revive a flagging desktop market.

Over the past few months the economic downturn has savaged the chip and PC market with many companies such as Compaq and Intel suffering the ill effects of poor sales.

Mark Whitby, director of Intel for UK and Ireland, said: "The market is grim but not desperate... This is a cyclical recession and we will pull out of it. XP will fundamentally stimulate incremental investment in technology."

After the rush to implement ecommerce strategies, companies are now reviewing their desktop policies, he claimed.

"Corporate refresh is now back on most IT directors agendas. They haven't done this for a while as they were caught up with ecommerce but now they are talking about it again," he said.

Simon Turner, managing director of PC World, agreed. He said: "We expect Windows XP to bring new excitement to the PC market. We've got great hopes for it."

In an effort to kick-start interest, online auctioneer QXL Ricardo is offering 500 PCs loaded with Windows XP at a starting price of £1.

However, critics of Windows XP claim users are turned off by the fact that the hardware specs required to run it will leave some organisations needing upgraded machines based on Pentium 4 chips.

Nick Eades, a director at Dell, admitted that while XP is best run on machines that are not more than two years old, many organisations are currently reviewing their desktop strategy.

"Many companies are coming to the end of their three year warranty when they'll look to upgrade, or the end of their leases. So the machines installed in 1999 have done their service and many of those installed then were Pentium 2 machines," he said.

The adoption rate of Pentium 4 is a key indicator to Windows XP popularity, Eades claimed.

"The Pentium 4 is now being adopted by those in the public sector right through to pockets of corporate Britain. Even some of the troubled telcos have been taking it on for small pilot projects," he added.

A spokesman for John Lewis said PC sales had been slow in the last two weeks as customers waited for XP to be released. He said he expected sales to increase in the next few days.