Last year before the release of Windows 7, Microsoft said that customers who purchased Windows 7 professional would be eligible to downgrade to Windows XP Professional for a limited period. This was to give businesses in particular, a chance to sort out their systems in preparation for the update.
This deal is available until 18 months after the release of Windows 7, which would be April 2011, or when Microsoft releases Windows 7 SP1, which ever comes first. I imagine the first service pack will come out before this date, while we do know Microsoft are working on the first service pack, we haven’t been given an official timetable for its release.
Al Gillen, an analyst with IDC said;
“So the clock is ticking down on that offer, after which time the only option for non-Software Assurance customers to deploy Windows XP is to use Windows XP Mode,”
Exempt from this are corporations that subscribe to Software Assurance (SA), Microsoft’s annuity-like upgrade guarantee program or have purchased Windows through volume licensing plans. They still have downgrade rights from any edition, including Windows 7, to any previous version going as far back as Windows 95.
Gillen says that the release of Windows 7 SP1 will be an “important milestone for customers” because it will end downgrade right to the older Windows XP, which for some reason people are determined to hang on to.
He also says that while traditionally in the past, many enterprises held off on upgrading to a new operating system until the first service pack was released, this is no longer the case.
“Historically, classic customer deployment behavior for new Windows client operating systems was to wait for the first service pack to arrive,”
Why so? Because of the constant patches and updates being delivered by Microsoft in between each service pack, this has given consumers more confidence and don’t feel the need to wait for the first service pack before purchasing.
Why users still want to run Windows XP is beyond me, but I guess there are still a few, however this figure is dwindling into non-existence. And if it’s not, is should be.
Source:
