HP is bringing back Windows 7 “by popular demand” — it’s not clear from whom — and making it pretty difficult to buy a computer with Windows 8. Who needs the future when you’ve got the very recent past?
HP sent a boatload of emails out to US shoppers over the weekend, pointing out that “Windows 7 is back”, before offering customers up to $US150 of savings for people buying a PC loaded with Windows 7 rather than 8.
US visitors to HP.com are being presented with Windows 7 machines by default. There’s not a single Windows 8 PCs listed as standard, unless you start customising the listings with optional filters. Even Android tablets are displayed center-stage, while you have to root around for its Windows 8 offering.
Windows 8 wasn’t the finest piece of OS design ever, but 8.1 solved so many of those issues that it’s actually pretty great. Certainly, it’s not so bad that a hardware company like HP should choose to peddle an ageing OS in favour of it, like XP was promoted over Vista. That time it was justified; this time it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. That said, using Windows 8 on a standard (non-touch) laptop or desktop can be quite cumbersome.
It’ll be interesting to see what direction HP Australia chooses to go in…[HP via Neowin via Verge]