Free Windows Vista Business and Windows XP SP2

[webmaster]

Microsoft has updated the set of offerings which permit end users to access free copies of Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2. Despite the fact that giving out free versions of its operating system contradicts the Redmond company's proprietary business model, both its latest Windows client and its predecessor are up for grabs at no charge at all. The downloads are made available via the Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image.

And with the exception of pirated copies of the Window operating system there is no association between "free" and Windows. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that Microsoft will ever diverge from its current business and development models in the future, by making an open source Windows available for free.

Still, end users can find both Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 for free over at Microsoft, the trick is just to know what you are looking for and, then, how to manage the offerings. And do not make the mistake of thinking that it is a handout, because that is not the case. Just bear with me, and I'll explain as we go along. But at this point, you have to know that both the latest Windows client and its predecessor are up for grabs straight from Microsoft as free downloads. And no, it doesn't sound too good to be true, although there is a catch, obviously.

There are a number of factors that together contribute to the free Vista and XP SP2 releases. First off, there was the Internet Explorer 7 release in October 2006. The next step in the evolution of Internet Explorer from IE6 broke the web, but just a tad, mainly because of added CSS support. This happened in particular due to a little something something Microsoft had previously implemented in Internet Explorer 6 in order to ensure compatibility, the all-too-familiar DOCTYPE switch used by web developers, to enable different modes of browser behavior.