In a reversal of its earlier stance, Microsoft officials confirmed that customers will be able to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows XP for a year and a half after the new system ships, or until the first Service Pack drops — whichever comes first.
While some industry observers the modified downgrade policy is a change for the better, at least one analyst says Microsoft still hasn’t enough to provide options for enterprises.
This industry observer says Microsoft simply hasn’t a clue!
The downgrade option is also not available to all Windows 7 users: Downgrade rights apply to purchasers of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate, so the option isn’t available to customers who buy Windows 7 Home Premium.
Additionally, customers who have either Software Assurance subscriptions or Enterprise Agreements with Microsoft can continue to get the downgrade as long as they want.
Confused, yet?
“Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate customers will have the option to downgrade to Windows XP Professional from PCs that ship within 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7 or until the release of a Windows 7 service pack (SP), whichever is sooner and if an SP is developed,” a Microsoft spokesperson told InternetNews.com in an e-mail.
Understand that, OK?
Eideard, have you seen MS put out any compelling reason for using “7″, other than replacing the crappy Vista OS?
They were actually making good progress with their Win 7 rollout. This smells like 20+ management types got in a room and made this incomprehensible policy during a 4 hour meeting while they were busy answering emails on their phones.
I don’t see why MS bothers. Just sell XP or Dos 3.3 to the people that want to run it and sell a modern OS to those not nailed to the past.
I run Vista and I have exactly one major problem with it. For reasons obscure MS does some really crappy things relating to my music, pictures and video. Now I admit that I ripped the music from my CDs so maybe they have an excuse here but I made the videos and I shot the pictures. Their being a pain in the butt here makes me want to sue them.
If Microsoft wants people to move adopt Windows 7 (or Vista) it needs to stop all of these downgrades.
I’m still on XP but I am so looking forward to Windows 7!
BTW there’s nothing confusing about the article. It’s dumb people that try to make it something other than what it actually is because, you know, Micros — I mean Micro$oft $ucks.
Get a life.
XP works great for me. Why would I ever upgrade? Funny how DOWNGRADING is now a “feature”.
A major hurdle for upgrading from XP to Vista / 7 is video driver support, needs WDDM driver
Vista will be buried.
Microsoft will replace Vista with Windows 7 but they can’t get away from XP just as yet. This is a next attempt from the software giant to control the direction of the market, in this case moving away from a nearly perfectly running OS (XP).
This is just another stepping stone and similar to the nightmare when Windows ME surfaced (the “Old Vista”). It was questionable then whether it was worth it to upgrade from Windows 2000, a better OS developed at that time from Microsoft.
Windows 7 (Seven) seems to be promising (hopefully if your hardware is less than 10 years old) and a better suitable OS for hardware handling maximizing the performance and overall experience.
I think there’s a lack of understanding from some of you here.
1. You can’t stick to one product for 5 years plus and expect to be successful.
2. You can’t expect a 5+ year product, especially, software to be MORE capable than newer ones and being able to provide better features.
3. Yes, there are MORANS hehe at MS too.
4. While I hate Vista as much as the next person, Windows7 has the efficiency and readiness that Vista should have been. Heck, Aero UI runs on integrated video!
5. Lastly, you can keep running older software only to find yourself a victim due to lack of support from the MFG fighting against hackers
From benchmarks I’ve seen, & XP have roughly the same performance. Why switch?
I have been running Vista for over a year now. Since SP1, I have not had any issues with Vista. Not sure why people are still dogging it. It works. Its 64Bit. And its visually attractive.
In the meantime, I can’t wait until this open source Windows XP clone comes out in final form: http://tinyurl.com/of5gu
A little free advice for MSFT:
1. Make only 1 version of Windows 7
2. Sell Windows 7 for $49, period.
3. Don’t bother with downgrade rights – just continue selling WinXP for $99 – if people want it that badly, they will pay.
4. Start counting the money. At $49 everyone will want to upgrade. Even mac fanboys will buy it just so they can complain.
>You can’t stick to one product for 5 years plus and expect to be successful.
Why not?
@12 chuck
I think you’re right. Looks like Win 7 is going to work okay, but there aren’t any hugely compelling reasons to upgrade from XP. And there is the hugely un-compelling price they are asking for it. At 50 bucks for a well featured version, they’d get the gravy train running again. Without it, (or a compelling reason I’m not seeing) it’s going to be slow going.
I hear Snow leopard from Apple is going to be 30 USD.
On a slightly separate thread I think apple charging 10 USD for iphone 3.0 upgrade is pretty outrageous. The update appears to be mainly little fixes and improvements. Many of the improvements seem to be about apple making more money by selling stuff. So I don’t think so.
Just to reiterate what Theone is stating… change is inevitable… we are here because we are growing beings; change is a part of life and as Apple coined the slogan “Think different”. In order to do better we must be better and as a result, it reflects us in all aspects in life including work. So, the time and effort spent from the people at Microsoft today will change what we do tomorrow. No offense, some of us have the intelligence to get it and some will be rebelus not be able to adapt.
“Nothing is new under the sun, only how it is done”, respect technology.
@15 I think you’re missing one important point – this product is not innovating enough, or some huge game changer to justify the expense…
#8, Theone,
1. You can’t stick to one product for 5 years plus and expect to be successful.
Oh???
How many years has the 737 been in production?It is still one of the more popular middle range airplanes out there.
How many years did Volkswagon produce the “Beetle”? Again, one of the more popular vehicles of all time.
How about the BIC Stick Pen? Yup, they still make it even after all these years.
So products can and are produced for decades. All my examples have had some serious modifications through the years but they still retain their original flavors.
Change for the sake of real progress and improvement is one thing. Change for the sake of change is quite another.
I like Chuck’s idea of $99 for XP, $49 for 7. Besides, there are still plenty of places to pick up XP for cheap.
I’m with Dennis. Vista works just fine. No blue screens or other crashes since I bought my Toshiba laptop with Vista installed in November 2007. I did disable window transparency, because it made Windows hard to read. No worries otherwise.
#17 Good examples. Here’s another: http://coltsmfg.com/products-c5-q50-COLT_PISTOLS.aspx