“The OEM versions of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate will continue to include downgrade rights to similar versions of Windows Vista and Windows XP Professional,” LeBlanc wrote. In order to compensate for that, Microsoft will apparently extend downgrade rights for Windows XP Professional beyond the Windows 7 SP1 milestone to throughout the Windows 7 life cycle. The Windows 7 SP1 beta features only minor fixes, the majority of them already being available through Windows Update.īrandon LeBlanc, a spokesperson for Microsoft, wrote on The Windows Blog, “Our business customers have told us that 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.” Windows 7 Lifecycle Originally slated to terminate within 18 months of Windows 7’s general release, or the availability of Windows 7 Service Pack 1-a beta of which appeared 12 July -end-user downgrade rights for Windows XP have now been extended.
Windows XP has been given a reprieve by Microsoft-at least, when it comes to users’ ability to downgrade to the popular but aging operating system.
