Microsoft would like to shake you until your ears bleed: Windows 7 isn’t as bad as Vista! Honest! It’s sleek, efficient and runs great on low-processor computers! You don’t need XP anymore! Really! What’s the matter with you people? Upgrade, don’t downgrade!
Microsoft has a point: the Windows 7 beta made it very clear that Microsoft had made long strides in correcting most of Vista’s issues, improving Vista’s strengths and tightening its weaknesses into an operating system that runs well on both high-powered PCs and netbooks alike.
But if you still don’t want Windows 7, and you’re a volume-license user or OEM, Microsoft will let you have your way: they have just confirmed that Microsoft will offer downgrade rights once Windows 7 ships.
It doesn’t appear that this means that you can just buy any version of Windows 7 and downgrade it to Vista if you decide to. It appears that this is a deal that will only affect OEMs, corporate customers or those who purchase Windows 7 Business or Ultimate Editions.
What this means is that businesses that don’t want to risk an update to Windows 7 and a possibly catastrophic roll-out across thousands of networked consumers can instead play it safe and continue to use XP. Enterprises are notoriously risk adverse. It also means that OEMs like HP can continue to sell users PCs that run XP default.
It highlights an on-going problem Microsoft is having: as they continue to release OSes, their business model demands that customers upgrade… but, for most customers and certainly most enterprises, XP continues to be good enough.
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