Windows 7 / XP - OEM Downgrade Rights

#Chri5# · 18 Oct 2010 at 22:06

What's the crack with this?

Lots of web content floating around about Dell (and others) stopping selling PCs Windows XP.

http://www.windows7news.com/2010/09/07/dell-stop-offering-windows-xp-downgrades
http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Windows-Security/Dell-to-Discontinue-Selling-PCs-with-Windows-XP-/

I've also had this from a HP / Toshiba trade distributor today:

As you may know our Microsoft has stipulated that vendors can no longer ship notebooks with Windows XP Downgrades

How are other people reading this?

a) You can't buy a new PC with XP installed from the factory
b) You can buy a new PC with Windows 7 Pro installed and you can downgrade it to Windows XP Pro if you want. In which case, what do you do for media and a key?

SiriusB · 18 Oct 2010 at 23:12

a) Correct. Even with the downgrade rights, OEMs still have to install Windows 7.

b) The media you need to find yourself. Any Retail media should work. For the key, the key that comes with your computer should work, at least that's how I understand it. It would likely require activation over the phone.

stoofa · 19 Oct 2010 at 10:17

Only certain OEM versions of the OS actually allow downgrade rights:

Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate include downgrade rights to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate include downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, or Windows XP x64 Edition.

Other OEM Windows 7 versions (for instance, Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows 7 Home Premium) do not include downgrade rights.

With "Virtual XP" being available inside Windows 7 there really is no reason why people would want to still be rolling out XP.

Burnsy2023 · 19 Oct 2010 at 10:24

stoofa said:
With "Virtual XP" being available inside Windows 7 there really is no reason why people would want to still be rolling out XP.

There are plenty of reasons why people may still be rolling out XP. If you have applications that are XP only, then it's still not simple to deploy, secure and update software within this virtual environment.

#Chri5# · 19 Oct 2010 at 10:48

Burnsy2023 said:
There are plenty of reasons why people may still be rolling out XP. If you have applications that are XP only, then it's still not simple to deploy, secure and update software within this virtual environment.

Exactly - 3rd software providers that still have their finger stuck somewhere dark. Mind you, don't even get me started on x64 support.

stoofa · 19 Oct 2010 at 12:11

Then these people should be moving forward.
It annoys me no end that we are forced to support legacy systems.
Windows XP is a dead OS.
No other company (other than Microsoft) are forced to support ancient versions of their products.
The majority of software houses out there support the latest and the previous version.

Due to people not being bothered, not putting in the work we get stuck with people "must have" WinXP or even Win2k.

Microsoft should start only supporting the latest two versions of their OS.
I tell you now - osftware vendors would then make damn sure their software was updated.

Burnsy2023 · 19 Oct 2010 at 12:16

stoofa said:
No other company (other than Microsoft) are forced to support ancient versions of their products.

Stoofa, you do make me laugh sometimes. IBM are still supporting systems from the 1970's.

#Chri5# · 19 Oct 2010 at 13:33

I got this from another distributor this morning:

As of October 22nd, no machines will be supplied with either XP pre-loaded or the downgrade disk.

However, we have been told that HP will continue to provide XP Recovery/Downgrade disks upon request to the help desk up until July 2011.

The majority of software houses out there support the latest and the previous version.

Only the majority though. Being an IT reseller, we get caught in the middle. We want to move the customer to a new platform (eg W7) as we get hardware in place. They have legacy software that doesn't support W7 for one of a number of reasons eg

Software developer wants to charge a lot for an upgrade as customer is out of contract
Developer hasn't pulled their finger out yet with a new version
Developer no longer exists and end-user hasn't/can't find an alternative product

At which point, life is too short to bang your head on a brickwall, so sticking with XP is the simple choice. We already bang our heads on things like x64 printer drivers for customers moving to SBS 2008.