Microsoft to Allow PC Makers to Downgrade to XP

mytrip pointed out a News.com story about a new Microsoft program to allow PC makers to downgrade from Vista to XP if they so choose. They're still pushing the new version of Windows very hard, but the option now exists for PC resellers to offer the now venerable OS. This is especially interesting as the article points out that OEM licenses for XP officially run out at the end of January. "Hewlett-Packard also started a program in August for many of its business models. 'For business desktops, workstations and select business notebooks and tablet PCs, customers can configure their systems to include the XP Pro restore disc for little or no charge,' HP spokeswoman Tiffany Smith said in an e-mail. She said it was too soon to gauge how high customer interest has been. 'Since we've only been offering (it) for about a month, we don't really have anything to share on demand.' A Microsoft representative confirmed there were some changes made over the summer to the options computer makers have with respect to XP, but the representative was not immediately able to elaborate on those changes."

Not the whole time

[localroger]

Originally, Dell switched entirely to Vista just like everyone else. Then after a month or two they strong-armed M$ into letting them offer XP to their business customers. (I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening in to the conversation that got that concession out of M$.) This is just M$ offering the same thing to other vendors, who are probably losing a lot of business to people who want XP and can only get it from Dell.

Re:Downgrade?

[Nitroadict]

This is further proof, if most did not suspect or pondered, imo, that Vista was just released to be released (see: rushed out) due to complications in getting whatever was originally supposed to what the next OS,which "7" is supposed to be: something new, something improved (one hopes :cross fingers:). However, I've stopped bitching at Vista and got a dual-boot of Xp/Ubuntu, so I apologize for getting mildly redundant there... I will probably eat my words when the 2nd service pack comes out, as I'm sure vista will be worked out better by then, but Vista has disappointed me with it's inherent DRM and resource hungry requirements, and random reorganization of stuff compared to XP. :\. They should, while they are at, publicly admit the existence (and perhaps promote) Windows Fundamentals For Legacy PC (essentially XP only it uses considerably less ram and resources). I recently put that baby on my old laptop (Compaq Presario; Anthlon Barton w/ 256 mb RAM) and the thing flies in comparison to the default XP install I had, and was even faster then the custom EUE XP I had installed previously (more stripped down). While it would counter intuitve for M$ to cater to such users of older pc's (therefore they forgo the purchase of more up to date pc's with Vista installed or Vista capable, whatever that means), I think it would be a smart move overall as it might convert a few people who are stuck using Windows 2k on their older laptops/desktops. Also, for some of the remaining ignorant, general users, this might be useful in letting them know just because Vista (or more generally "the new windows") isn't working, that they need not panic and just downgrade. Some PR spin could prevent some of this from M$ admitting, gasp, a few problems with Vista ;D

Re:Venerable?

[Flipao]

Is there some secret meaning for that word that I don't know?

In the Catholic Church's Latin rite, venerable is the title of a person who has been posthumously declared "heroic in virtue" [Wikipedia.org]

I think he means XP was a great OS before it died, maybe his computer blew up or something.

Re:Not the whole time

[nategoose]

According to my reading of the article this actually seemed to be about OEMs enabling customers to "downgrade" to XP after purchasing a system with Vista business or ultimate by providing the customer with a copy of XP to install. If so it'd be good for customers because they could see which works out for them and then eventually move to Vista totally if it improves to meet their needs.

News?

[Barny]

How the hell is this news, downgrade rights have been available for consumers of ultimate and business since launch, it is how they get so many corporate sales of vista (since they ignore the vista part and just load xp pro as always.

I had one of the senior MS sales people for Australia recommend for our store to buy a 1 user "mass license" and then use that for installing downgrade rights, this is an option that has been open to OEMers for quite a while, its just they are finally waking up and realising that not everyone wants the latest POS from Microsoft.

Re:XP is insufficient, Vista is ridiculous

[White Flame]

• I don't care if Vista will run "extremely well", it will take up far more resources than any other option, and I'm running very CPU and memory intensive applications. I'm getting a powerful machine to run my applications, not just to run a lumbering OS.
• I have a bunch of peripherals and don't want to risk driver problems.
• I do not want to be encumbered with DRM and other "trusted computing" issues with basic system configuration, troubleshooting, and software development, nor in my media recording, archives, and playback.
• I run a lot of not-very-mainstream software that doesn't explicitly support Vista yet, but does support Win32 and Linux.
• In the little that I've played around with doing simple things on Vista on store display boxes, it has either crashed or thrown security exceptions at me. I think it reflects a lot of the negative responses I've seen here from Vista users here and elsewhere as consistent usability, stability, and access problems.

Re:Downgrade?

[Sylver Dragon]

I like my games, and Linux just doesn't do that well.

I'd be careful on Vista as well, then. My personal addiction has been World of Warcraft for some time, and when I upgraded to Vista on my home system, my frame-rates tanked. My system is not top of the line, nor close even. But it was able to run WoW on OK graphics settings, and get playable frame-rates anywhere but the worst of places, while I was running XP. After a few months of dealing with the performance hit, I downgraded to XP. My frame-rates are back to reasonable, at higher graphics settings than I had been using in Vista (which I had lowered to make the game playable) and higher frame-rates.
Now, this probably has more to do with the drivers for my graphics card (6600GT) than the OS itself, but it is an issue which will keep me from upgrading.

Re:Not the whole time

[crymeph0]

It depended on the PC model. Where I work, we have a small business account with Dell. We could get XP on higher-end workstations we use for 3-D modeling and the like, but we had to get Vista on the lower-end PCs we use on the factory floor, until Dell relented a month or so after Vista hit. I know our IT guy sent some very strongly worded emails to our Dell sales rep asking for XP on all computers, and I'm sure they were getting the same from many of their business customers.

Re:Venerable?

[porcupine8]

Common English usage is for something that's old, but honorable or respected because of (in part) that age. Something to be venerated. XP may be old, but the rest...

Re:XP is insufficient, Vista is ridiculous

[calebt3]

I recommend VirtualBox.

Re:I'm a Vista Power User

[allcar]

He should have just concentrated on useful new features like the ability to get a commmand window at any folder. If that's the most compelling reason to upgrade, it's not surprising that things aren't going too well for Vista. I'm sure that was a "PowerToy" ages ago.

Re:I'm a Vista Power User

[UnknownSoldier]

> He should have just concentrated on useful new features like the ability to get a commmand window at any folder.

Agreed.

In the meantime, snag 4NT.

Command Prompt -> Explorer
alias x=start explorer /e,"%_CWD"

Explorer -> Command Prompt
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/files/OpenCommandWindowHere.zip [codinghorror.com]

Re:Making Vista viable

[LordEd]

2. Licensing - A 1x transfer? Businesses should stay away just for that reason alone.

Microsoft revised their licensing [slashdot.org] permitting reinstalls.

4. UAC. The epitomy of the Are you sure? box.

I rarely get the deny/allow message in normal use. Not as much as I expected from reading here.

Re:Not the whole time

[Anonymous Coward]

Originally, Dell switched entirely to Vista just like everyone else. Then after a month or two they strong-armed M$ into letting them offer XP to their business customers. (I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening in to the conversation that got that concession out of M$.) This is just M$ offering the same thing to other vendors, who are probably losing a lot of business to people who want XP and can only get it from Dell.


Official policy states that we are NOT allowed to give people people a replacement license from Vista to XP or XP to Vista. This is called an OS Swap, and in the olden days before Vista came out and went over like a lead baloon, it was fine. Bought a system with WinXP but really need Win2k? Ok, sure, fine. XP Home but really need XP Pro? Not a problem at all.

We can still do XP to XP and Vista to Vista, but whatever concession we had to make with Microsoft to offer XP again must have included a "But you (Dell) agree NOT to let them escape Vista hell without them buying a retail copy of XP, so we (MS) get paid twice" clause.

There are workarounds -- if it's under 21 days, we've been telling people to return and reorder the system properly (costing us $Shitloads$) or if the customer really wants it, we can exchange the entire system and instruct the exchanges team to do XP instead.

My gut guess is that Microsoft just doesn't want word to get out that all these "sales" that MS is writing down on systems that shipped with Vista are being wiped clean and having XP put on them the second they POST for the first time.

Which, BTW, is exactly what's happening. Our #1 call on Vista, outstripping everything else by a LARGE margin, is "How the hell do I delete this piece of crap and put XP on the machine instead?"

Vista setup/3+hrs | Linux/1.25hrs *with xtra apps*

[capnkr]

Bought a new Acer laptop yesterday, one which came with Vista Basic. I've been MSFree for 8 years, but I'll leave it on there, since I can use IE to check websites during development. Thought I'd see what all the Aero buzz was about, too - though I had my doubts aboutit running very well, what with only 512M RAM.

Setup of the win partition of the laptop - how it *should* be done (remove all extra crap - trialware and Norton etc, turn off unnecessary services, install FFox/AVG/ZA/etc) - took _over 3 hours_, and this is with the OS ***pre-installed***, and even more amazing - without doing any MS updates... This is still a bare bones OS at this point in time - no office/productivity/fun software, nothing but the basics, a bare minimum. And it won't even let me try Aero - for some reason (might need more RAM, or a better vid card/chipset, or both, or more). :rolleyes:

Then I partitioned the drive, installed Mepis 6.5.02 + an additional 225M of updates and my favorite/needed apps (graphic, code, & video editors, etc), and that whole process took just a little over 1.25 hours, with no reboots at all. Wireless (Broadcom chipset) worked right out of the box, as did proper video resolution, sound, touchpad, etc etc. I've got more software than I'll ever use, and as a bonus - the Beryl 3D window manager works just fine, and is quite impressive.

Funny that this story got posted, one of my searches today was checking to see if I could downgrade the win OS to XP. But the more I think of it, the story of my experience just yesterday only hammers home what I've known for the last 8 years:

MS Windows pretty much just sucks, for me. In every way imaginable.

My experience with Vista underscored just how much Freedom I have had these past 8 years, and how much that means to me.

Time to make some more donations...

Re:Restrictive, Confusing, the Usual.

[jack455]

Including the XP disc will not show in their numbers when figuring their deployment of Vista. They will claim every downgrade as a Vista sale because the Vista sale already happened. They will be much happier than if a PC shipped with XP installed. It's just about apparent market share. That's why Linux advocates who dual boot are probably fairly ineffective as the footprint of Windows is much more visible on the web.

Re:Downgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

My son runs WoW under Ubuntu Linux using Wine.

Re:Skip Vista? Dr. Death arrives after only 3 year

[MojoStan]

Dr. Death has arrived. After only 3 years, requiem for an OS: Bill Gates is software's Dr. Death, ready to kill software prematurely that customers want to use. He has decided that Windows XP will die soon [microsoft.com]: January 31, 2008.

I'm not trying to dispute the spirit of your post, but I think saying XP "will die" on January 31 is "greatly exaggerating." That's just the date Microsoft will stop making XP available to retailers and OEMs. That's not the date MS stops support.

According to MS's Windows XP Pro lifecycle page [microsoft.com], "mainstream support" for XP lasts until April 14, 2009 and "extended support" (which includes security updates and paid support [microsoft.com]) lasts until at least April 8, 2014 (the same dates apply to XP Home). That's actually a heck of a lot longer than any other OS AFAIK.

The really major problems in Windows XP stopped only after SP2 was released, on August 25, 2004. That means we have gotten only 3 years of good use from Windows XP.

Since XP will continue to get security updates, paid support, and free knowledgebase support until at least April 2014, you should be able to get at least a few more years of use from XP. If you need a bunch of additional licenses, order them before January 31 (to be safe). If you only need a few additional licenses, it should be easy to find old stock after that date.

That said, Linux distros have gotten a heck of a lot better since XP was released nearly six years ago. Also, desktop versions of Ubuntu LTS guarantee 3 years of support, which is pretty darned good for a free download that's updated every 2 years (LTS versions).