Microsoft extends Windows XP OEM downgrade rights until 2020

[Arthur]

Good news for people who want to continue running XP Pro until 2020. Microsoft have changed their minds (yet again) regarding OEM downgrade rights.

 

2020 is also the year that Windows 7 Professional & Enterprise are retired too.

 

 

Article: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179109/Microsoft_extends_Windows_XP_downgrade_rights_until_2020

 

Just a day before Microsoft drops support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the company announced on Monday that people running some versions of Windows 7 can "downgrade" to the aged operating system for up to 10 years.

 

The move is highly unusual. In the past, Microsoft has terminated downgrade rights -- which let customers replace a newer version of Windows with an older edition without paying for two copies -- within months of introducing a new OS.

 

While few consumers may want to downgrade from Windows 7 to XP -- unlike when many mutinied against Vista three years ago -- businesses often want to standardize on a single operating system to simplify machine management.

 

Monday's announcement was the second Windows XP downgrade rights extension. Microsoft originally limited Windows 7-to-Windows XP downgrades to six months after Windows 7's release, but backtracked in June 2009 after an analyst with Gartner Research called the plan a "real mess."

 

Instead, Microsoft later said it would allow downgrades to Windows XP until 18 months after the October 2009 debut of Windows 7, or until it released Windows 7 SP1.

 

In either scenario, XP downgrade rights would have expired sometime in 2011, perhaps as early as April.

 

On Monday, Microsoft again changed its mind. Users running Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate will now be able to downgrade to Windows XP Professional throughout the entire lifecycle of Windows 7.

 

"Our business customers have told us that the removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing," said Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, in an entry on the company blog.

 

Windows 7 Professional won't be fully retired until January 2020; the Ultimate edition will be put out to pasture five years earlier, in January 2015.

 

Although Microsoft said it made the change to simplify the work in tracking licensing rights for PCs, the continued popularity of Windows XP may have had something to do with it. At the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which opened Monday in Washington D.C., a company executive acknowledged that 74% of business computers still run XP.

 

The downgrade rights are available only from OEM copies of Windows 7, those that are pre-installed by computer makers.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Arthur

[Cache]

That's good news, makes my planning easier for next summer when the lease comes up!

[Arthur]

Microsoft have also delayed the RTM release of SP1 for Windows 7 & 2008 R2 too. It will now ship in the first half of 2011.

 

This means that had they not extended the OEM downgrade rights for XP, you would have still had around 5-11 months.

[PiqueABoo]

Nooo.... I want an SP that fixes all my issues, yesterday, damnit! Won't bother playing with the beta SP1 I just downloaded then coz it likely won't be very much like the real deal.

[SYNACK]

Great more development time wasted on an old outdated platform, why don't they bring back Windows 98 while they are at it . Then there will be the wining that there are still little bugs in the new OSs that have not been fixed as all the dev time has been wasted on hacking XP into shape to deal with newer threats and systems.

 

Will they just switch of the life support already and let it die!!

[Quackers]

 

Will they just switch of the life support already and let it die!!

 

Have you not seen the rubbish they have pumped out to replace it? Windows Vista, Windows 7? No wonder people will not let go of XP. While 7 might not have as many annoyances as Vista and be more polished, its still a pain in the neck, and somebody at Microsoft needs burning/hanging for this.

[localzuk]

Have you not seen the rubbish they have pumped out to replace it? Windows Vista, Windows 7? No wonder people will not let go of XP. While 7 might not have as many annoyances as Vista and be more polished, its still a pain in the neck, and somebody at Microsoft needs burning/hanging for this.

 

Disagree vehemently. Windows 7 is head and shoulders above XP in terms of manageability, security, looks, user-friendliness, and most other areas.

 

What is wrong with 7 that you think someone needs hanging for?

[SYNACK]

Have you not seen the rubbish they have pumped out to replace it? Windows Vista, Windows 7? No wonder people will not let go of XP. While 7 might not have as many annoyances as Vista and be more polished, its still a pain in the neck, and somebody at Microsoft needs burning/hanging for this.

 

I use 7 and Vista exclusivly and can't understand why people still cling to the unautomated insecure cack that is XP (unless they need to for budget reasons). I can install a 7 system in about 20 minutes with no driver hassels and no need for piles of workarounds to make it work with old XP. If there are not drivers in general it just goes online and grabs them automatticly. Being released in the near rather than long term past it also does not need 3 service packs and 100 or so hotfixes.

 

It has all sorts of automation when it coems to repairing itself and can recover from all sorts of issues without me having to do it. It makes use of the new hardware and multiple cores making newer machines run faster than they would under XP. I don't have to spend hours hunting for old drivers or systems that can be pushed into the past by the vendor.

 

Having taken the time to learn about the new OS, its features etc and allowing the users to also use a system that they are familiar with from home is also good, it helps that the system is actually not hard to get to grips with ans that we have far less training issues with it.

 

It uses S3 suspend without a hack and has better support for offline files than XP meaning our laptops hum along nicely with less issues. Its faster at installing software too thanks to a way better implementation of the Windows Installer engine.

 

I can't stand XP anymore, it causes all sorts of issues by just being old and outdated, it lacks support for so much hardware out of the box and is just so primative when it comes to its implementation of GPOs and automatic repairs in comparison.

 

I simply don't understand it, is it like the fetish people have for old cars, is it learning inertia or what.

[FN-GM]

I use 7 and Vista exclusivly and can't understand why people still cling to the unautomated insecure cack that is XP (unless they need to for budget reasons). I can install a 7 system in about 20 minutes with no driver hassels and no need for piles of workarounds to make it work with old XP. If there are not drivers in general it just goes online and grabs them automatticly. Being released in the near rather than long term past it also does not need 3 service packs and 100 or so hotfixes.

 

It has all sorts of automation when it coems to repairing itself and can recover from all sorts of issues without me having to do it. It makes use of the new hardware and multiple cores making newer machines run faster than they would under XP. I don't have to spend hours hunting for old drivers or systems that can be pushed into the past by the vendor.

 

Having taken the time to learn about the new OS, its features etc and allowing the users to also use a system that they are familiar with from home is also good, it helps that the system is actually not hard to get to grips with ans that we have far less training issues with it.

 

It uses S3 suspend without a hack and has better support for offline files than XP meaning our laptops hum along nicely with less issues. Its faster at installing software too thanks to a way better implementation of the Windows Installer engine.

 

I can't stand XP anymore, it causes all sorts of issues by just being old and outdated, it lacks support for so much hardware out of the box and is just so primative when it comes to its implementation of GPOs and automatic repairs in comparison.

 

I simply don't understand it, is it like the fetish people have for old cars, is it learning inertia or what.

 

100% agree!

 

Myself i cant see anyone installing Windows XP in 2020. Who would use a 19 year old operating system?

 

Also by that time the computers will be so high spec XP wont run on them.

[localzuk]

100% agree!

 

Myself i cant see anyone installing Windows XP in 2020. Who would use a 19 year old operating system?

 

Also by that time the computers will be so high spec XP wont run on them.

 

The equivalent would be using Windows 3.1 now. Obscene isn't it?

[Arthur]

I agree with localzuk and Synack. Windows 7 is light years ahead of XP in pretty much every area you care to mention. If people had actually given Vista a chance, they wouldn't feel so overwhelmed with the differences between XP and 7.

[mattx]

The equivalent would be using Windows 3.1 now. Obscene isn't it?

 

Not really - some old checkout systems still use 3.1

[Hightower]

no driver hassels and no need for piles of workarounds to make it work with old XP. If there are not drivers in general it just goes online and grabs them automatticly

 

Surely that's not the best way to build a machine. If you build a class of 30 that all need to pull their drivers down your internet would just drop.

Edited July 14, 2010 by Hightower
spelling

[cookie_monster]

I think he means just for the odd missing driver not all drivers.

[andyturpie]

Good news - as an RM School, we cannot afford to do a one swoop upgrade to Win7 at the moment. It will give us a couple of years breathing space. Win 7 all the way though.

[SYNACK]

Surely that's not the best way to build a machine. If you build a class of 30 that all need to pull their drivers down your internet would just drop.

 

I think he means just for the odd missing driver not all drivers.

 

Exactly, we put most drivers in the MDT driver share so they are avalible and installed on install, the auto driver bit is really handy though for when you are doing the one offs or the first machine of a batch. You let the first one grab the drivers automaticly and then you can easily look for the most current drivers to be integrated from the update catalogue. Besides all the drivers are cached at the ISA box anyway so even if they aren't included in MDT for some reason they can come from cache.

 

I also agree with Arthur's insight on transitions, We went Vista first as that too had a lot of the features that everyone raves about in 7 but inexplicably hated in Vista. With Vista we waited till after SP1 and it worked well in our environment lowering the time needed to support them. When it came to pushing out 7 it was not a big deal in training or in actual implementation as we had already encountered most of the new things before in a slightly less polished form. Most of the staff did not even notice that the computer suite had changed from Vista to 7.

 

@Mattx - the difference is that those terminals (I have never encountered any in stores round here) have one very specific and limited set purpose. They are also probably (hopefully) kept far, far away from the internet. The machines we are talking about are multi use computers with the aim of providing the most learning benifit to the students. Using XP in 2020 would be like teaching people to write with a quill and ink well. The OS is the foundation and forms the basis of what you can do, how many compatibility layers and extra apps is it going to need piled on top of it to even just support the newer hardware and input methods like multitouch. I doubt that Microsoft is going to release another service pack for XP and it is not going to be much fun having to install a driver for every single bit of hardware in the computer as the OS has no idea what it is.

[Arthur]

Microsoft have posted some additional info on their Windows Team Blog...

 

Customers who purchase Windows 7 PCs with end user downgrade rights as provided in the software license terms (EULA) will be able to downgrade to Windows XP Professional on those PCs for the life of the PC. However, customers will not be able to buy a Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate PC with end user downgrade rights after Windows 7 reaches the end of sales date in the OEM channel – which according to the current Windows Lifecycle policy is 2 years after the next version of Windows ships.

 

These changes are unrelated to our technical support policy. As mentioned in this blog post, extended support for Windows XP SP3 will continue through April 2014. So customers who downgrade their Windows 7 PCs to Windows XP will no longer be able to receive extended support after April 2014. After April 2014, customers will need to either get a custom support agreement or install a more modern OS on those PCs.

 

And of course there’s also the question of third party applications that run on Windows XP that our customers need as well. Analyst firms such as Gartner are predicting that many third party applications will no longer be supported by their makers after 2011, so we encourage customers to think holistically about their IT infrastructure as they make their Windows migration plans.