Windows 7 to XP downgrade - Speculations and Confusion

Ever since Microsoft has announced Windows 7, lots of confusion and speculations have started among the Windows XP users. Since the new units sold by Microsoft's OEM will have default os as Windows 7, people who use XP and would like to keep XP are confused over the downgrade.

Earlier this year, Microsoft refused to confirm a report which claimed that the company planned to limit the duration it would allow users to downgrade from Windows 7 to XP to six months after Windows 7 shipped.

As mentioned in ZDNET's Mary-Jo Foley's blog, Microsoft spokesperson  provided the publication with the following statement:

“Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate customers will have the option to downgrade to Windows XP Professional from PCs that ship within 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7 or until the release of a Windows 7 service pack, whichever is sooner, and if a service pack is developed.”

It has been Microsoft's age old strategy to push users to its new OS to increase the sale and promote the newer one. However,  today most of the Business Units and average Windows users are using XP and they like it even better than Vista.

It has been just couple years Vista has launched and has not been too much successful. Now with this strategy, it seems Microsoft wants users to compulsory migrate on to Windows 7 or atleast to Windows Vista.

It is to be kept in mind here that eventhough Microsoft has kept a time cap and feasibility to downgrade  from Windows 7 to XP, still the process is very costly and tedious. On the contrary, downgrading from Windows 7 to Vista is easier and hence it is suggests users to have no choice but to use either Vista or migrate to Windows 7...