Microsoft Extends Windows XP Downgrade to 2020

Another decade of Windows XP -- who's excited?!

While the consumer and enthusiast are now happily moving to Windows 7, businesses are still chugging along on Windows XP. This would present a problem for businesses buying and installing new computers in the workplace if not for the Windows XP downgrade program available to OEM Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate SKUs.

Originally, these downgrade rights were to disappear once Microsoft ships the first Service Pack in 2011, but upon the release of the SP1 beta, Microsoft announced that it would extend the XP downgrade period through to January 2020 for the Professional and January 2015 for the Ultimate edition (dates according to Computerworld).

"This will help maintain consistency for downgrade rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle," wrote Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, in an entry on the company blog. "As a result, the OEM versions of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate will continue to include downgrade rights to the similar versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional.  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. Enabling such rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle will make it easier for customers as they plan deployments to Windows 7."

Microsoft made this change to help ease confusion for businesses getting new PCs but aren't able to make the switch just yet. With the extension of the downgrade rights, Microsoft will still be able to sell a Windows license and businesses can still run Windows XP.

LeBlanc added, "Our business customers have told us that the 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."

74% of Enterprise PCs Are Still Running Win XP

Microsoft recently announced that it had hit a huge milestone with Windows 7: they had sold 150 million copies. However, despite this success in the mainstream consumer market, the adoption rate among enterprise customers has been slow.

Microsoft this week revealed that the vast majority of businesses are still running on Microsoft's nine-year-old OS, Windows XP. Speaking yesterday at the Windows Partner Conference, Corporate Vice President of Windows, Tammi Reller, admitted that nearly three quarters (74 percent) of business PCs are still running XP. Reller also revealed that, at 4.4 years, the average age of a business PC is the highest it's ever been.

Though business adoption has been slow, things should look up soon if a recent study by Dimensional Research is to be believed. Back in April the firm conducted a survey of nearly 1,000 IT professionals and found worries about upgrading to Windows 7 had decreased while worries about maintaining Windows XP had increased.

The survey found that 87 percent of respondents planned to deploy Windows 7. This is compared to 47 percent who had plans to deploy Vista at a comparable point after its release. Further, 46 percent of the total surveyed revealed they had plans to migrate even before the release of SP1. Dimensional Research said that, while 25 percent of people expressed concerns about Windows 7 performance, this is down from 47 percent last year.

Although 60 percent of the respondents were worried about the cost and overhead of migrating to Windows 7, that figure was down from 72 percent last year. Similarly, 40 percent of the respondents said that they're worried about the hassles of maintaining Windows XP as it gets older. This figure is up from 28 percent last year.