Laplink slashes PCmover to under $1 for businesses upgrading from XP

Windows XP still has a solid three years left before it reaches End of Support (EOS), the point at which the formidable desktop operating system will be forced into retirement.

On the 24th of this month, we'll be celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Windows XP's release to manufacturing, and even though it seems like it will be a "this is your life" kind of retirement retrospective, the operating system still has a massive userbase in the enterprise.

Late last year, nearly 75% of enterprise customers surveyed by Microsoft and Forrester Research were still running XP. Many businesses held out all the way through Vista, and are now looking at big upgrade projects where in-place upgrades aren't possible and clean or custom installs are required on every PC they have deployed.

Laplink Software says that only 21% of the potential Windows 7 upgrade scenarios are in-place upgrades (upgrades that don't require that the older OS first be removed and all pertinent user data be backed up and saved), so there's a good chance enterprise IT will have to do clean installs anyway.

So as sort of a half-hearted celebration of the longevity of XP, Laplink today said it is offering its PCmover software for only $.99 per license to help companies with moderate to large (1,000 machines+) XP deployments to move their programs, files and settings to Windows 7 in place.

"Windows XP will not be supported indefinitely by Microsoft," Laplink CEO Thomas Koll said bluntly. "Businesses will need to deploy Windows 7 and Laplink has a much-needed solution."

Of course, in three years, Windows 8 might just be ready for widespread enterprise deployment.