Are Mac users buying the remaining copies of Windows XP?

Posted by Michael Horowitz

Six hours ago Ina Fried wrote that Windows XP is a hot item at Amazon.com. The full version of XP Home was number 15 on the software hit parade and the full version of XP Professional was number 21. Amazon updates the list hourly. As I write this, XP Professional is up to number 14, though XP Home slipped down to 16.

There are many ways to slice and dice Windows XP, but I'm going to focus on three "families" - full (expensive), upgrade and OEM (cheap).

The two best selling versions at Amazon are from the "full" family. Full versions of XP can be installed on a virgin computer, or more likely, a virgin virtual machine. My guess is that Mac users are gobbling up the full editions of XP to run in virtual machines alongside OS X. I say this because Mac OS X Leopard is number 7 on the list, VMware Fusion is number 5 and Parallels Desktop is number 17. Fusion and Parallels both provide virtual machines for OS X.

I also think this because the more expensive full versions of XP are outselling the cheaper upgrade versions.

Note: This is a great article.
Read the rest at cnet.