However, Microsoft backtracked on Monday, acknowledging customer concerns that this would be tricky for them to comply with.
"While the majority of customers are actively transitioning to Windows 7, and PC manufacturers are focused on delivering PCs and devices with Windows 7 preinstalled, our business customers have told us that removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing, given the rights change would be made for new PCs preinstalled with Windows 7, and managing a hybrid environment with PCs that have different end-user rights based on date of purchase would be challenging to track," Microsoft said in a blog post.
Instead, Microsoft now says customers buying new Windows 7 PCs will have the option to downgrade those machines to XP throughout the life cycle of Windows 7.
"To support our customers' 'unprecedented move' to migrate their PC environment to Windows 7, we have decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1," Microsoft said. "This will help maintain consistency for downgrade rights throughout the Windows 7 life cycle...Going forward, businesses can continue to purchase new PCs and utilize end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP or Windows Vista until they are ready to use Windows 7."
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Q I bought an MSI U90 laptop last year that came with Windows XP pre-installed, but I recently installed Windows 7 on it. I have now decided that I want to |
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Users who continue to demand to have Windows XP can perform a downgrade from Windows 7, as that option hasn't yet been given a firm kill date. |
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However, ZDNet's Ed Bott has come up with a pretty compelling calculation that any and all versions of the Windows OS that allow XP downgrading will, |
Enterprise customers can still downgrade to Windows XP. They're only supposed to do it (in Microsoft's words) “until they are ready to use Windows 7,” but
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The only possibility to get Windows XP on a new system will be, from now on, a downgrade option which will be viable until 2014. The one-year anniversary of |
Funny thing is our office recently upgrade all computers from Windows XP to Windows 7. Almost immediately had to "downgrade" back to XP!
AWHHHH I DONT HAVE MY WINDOWS 2000 DISK! I guess I'll downgrade from 7 to xp :D
windows 8 Is there a way to downgrade your windows 8 into windows 7 or xp?
:O windows 8 Is there a way to downgrade your windows 8 into windows 7 or xp?
windows 8 :P Is there a way to downgrade your windows 8 into windows 7 or xp?