By Timothy Prickett Morgan
In an innovative move to keep PC desktop and workstation sales moving along, Dell Computer Corp is offering customers who buy its PC desktops, workstations and laptops running the current Windows NT 4.0 a free upgrade to Windows 2000 Professional. Dell hopes the move might encourage customers not to put their machine purchases on hold until Windows 2000 makes its debut on the desktop at the end of the year (or thereabouts). Professional is the workstation edition of Windows 2000.
Dell says that the deal will be in effect until February 2000, which is probably when Windows 2000 Professional will be ready for prime time. By then, the first Service Packs will be available to fix its inevitable early bugs. Included in the free Windows 2000 upgrade will be a special upgrade kit that includes all the driver and BIOS updates for the specific Dell machines customers purchase, as well as the documentation that tells them how to apply these patches so they can upgrade to Windows 2000.
