On Monday, Microsoft again changed its mind. In either scenario, XP downgrade rights would have expired sometime in 2011, perhaps as early as April.
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. 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.” Monday’s announcement was the second Windows XP downgrade rights extension. 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. 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. 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.
