PC maker Dell is helping to usher in a new age by announcing that it will no longer offer PCs downgraded to Windows XP after the end of this month. It's a deadline well ahead of that set by Microsoft: October 22nd, which, coincidentally enough, marks the first birthday of Windows 7.

Windows XP Driver Support to Continue

Although Dell will continue offering driver support for Windows XP for another two years (December 2012, in fact), the company is determined to stop selling the OS well before October 22.

"This means that we will stop offering XP as an option for customers starting this month in preparation for next month's deadline," a representative said in a recent blog post.

Surprisingly, it won't be impossible to get Windows XP on a Dell machine, even after the deadline. The company said it will allow customers who purchase Windows 7 Professional to make the downgrade, even though it originally had decided to close out this process with the shipment of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Corporate customers will also have the option to downgrade, since Dell has traditionally given businesses more leeway in this regard.

"After the October 22 date, qualified customers will still be able to get systems with Windows XP through Dell's Custom Factory Integration service," the company noted. (Source: eweek.com)

XP Downgrade Difficult

In the end, Microsoft and PC makers like Dell aren't making it impossible to use Windows XP instead of Windows 7 -- they're just making it a whole lot harder to do. Despite all of these efforts, Windows XP continues to be, by far, the most-used operating system in the world. (Source: cnet.com)

Low-powered netbooks, which were incredibly popular during the early stages of this most recent recession, helped keep the XP fan club alive. But as companies turn their attention to building Windows 7 tablets, perhaps that's about to change.