Who said that you can never go back home again? Shortly after nixing Windows XP installations in favor of Vista on its desktop and laptop lines, Dell has announced that it’s bringing back the outdated OS on select Dell models. The reason? Apparently Dell customers demanded Windows XP on the vendor’s “IdeaStorm” site–which you’ll recall, is the same reason why Dell will soon offer pre-installed Linux on its products. “We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,” the vendor said in a statement.

Dell needs all the customer goodwill it can get these days and it’s nice to see the company taking customer suggestions to heart. This is bad news, however, for Microsoft: having droves of Dell customers beg the company to dispose of Vista in favor of the less buggy XP is just about the worst PR imaginable (and that’s including Microsoft’s own Vista ad campaign). Obviously, Dell customers don’t think that Vista is quite ready for prime time; it will be interesting to see if other major PC vendors follow suit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go demand that Dell start pre-installing OS X.

For more on the announcement:
– see this ZDnet article