Microsoft Ups the Ante for Buying a New PC to Rid the World of Windows XP

A couple weeks back, we told you about a deal that Microsoft unleashed where buying a new PC with Windows 8 installed on it would net a $50 in-store purchase card, 90 days free support, and free data transfer. Microsoft has now sweetened the deal but has thrown in a couple of additional stipulations.

If you jump out to the Microsoft store web site today, you'll see that the deal remains relatively the same, except that now the $50 has been bumped to $100 and Microsoft is now including the Surface Pro 2 in the mix of applicable "select" PCs.

There are a couple ways to take advantage of this deal. First, customers can open a web browser and navigate to MicrosoftStore.com. If you're surfing the site with a computer running Windows XP, a special pop-up will display the deal. Interested customers can also lug their old Windows XP computers into a physical Microsoft retail store and get the same $100 savings if they turn the computer in for recycling. Of course, there's a caveat of sorts. The presented PC must retail for over $599. How one is able to determine if their old computer is worth that much these days is guesswork.

The promotion runs from March 20, 2014 to June 15, 2014. The end-date is important to note since that's about 2 months beyond the actual expiration for Windows XP support, which is April 8, 2014. I guess Microsoft is giving Windows XP holdouts a couple months to realize either that Microsoft was serious about the deadline, or that a purported increase in malware attacks against Windows XP wasn't just blowing smoke.

You can read more about the deal on the Microsoft store web site: Buy a new PC and get $100 instant savings