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While Microsoft continues to update Windows 8 to address its critics, some computer makers have a different way to please fans of classic Windows: Just keep selling computers with the old software.
In an email newsletter Wednesday, HP led its sales pitch with the line “Windows 7 PCs on sale, just in time for school,” adding that Windows 7 is still available preinstalled on select notebooks and desktops. From HP’s website, more than a dozen laptops and desktop models running Windows 7 are still offered for sale.
HP is not alone in continuing to sell Windows 7 PCs to consumers. Dell still offers a number of consumer PCs running Windows 7, as do other computer makers.
While not unheard of — PC makers clung to Windows XP after Vista flopped — it does show that the industry still sees Windows 8 as a drawback, at least for some PC buyers.
It has been nearly two years since Windows 8 went on sale. Though the update was pitched as the future of Windows, Microsoft has spent the last couple of years finding ways to make the new Windows look more like the old one. With Windows 8.1, released last year, Microsoft added the ability to boot to the old-style desktop.
The company has promised the next version of Windows will go even further, allowing new-style apps to run from the desktop and bringing back a more traditional start menu.
As for consumer PCs with Windows 7, expect to see those on sale through Oct. 31, after which computer makers will no longer be able to sell them as a standard option, per Microsoft’s policy.
Microsoft hasn’t set an end-of-sales date for machines running the professional version of Windows 7, and business customers often have the right to “downgrade” their machines to an older version of Windows as well.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
