Microsoft Announced Windows 7 Downgrade Rights Up Until 2020

Microsoft officially announced yesterday on The Windows Blog that it has decided to extend the Windows 7 downgrade rights, which allow customers to downgrade the operating system on their machines to either Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista. Originally, Microsoft made it known that Windows 7 downgrade rights would be available only 18 months after Windows 7 was released, or when the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 was rolled out. While Microsoft doesn’t indicate for how long they are extending downgrade rights, ComputerWorld reports that the feature will available until 2010, the year Windows 7 will be discontinued.

On a sidenote, a Microsoft executive revealed yesterday at the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference [WPC] in Washington D.C. that 74% of business computers, with hardware averaging 4.4 years old, still run Windows XP. That’s exactly three quarters of business computers. Windows XP is still the most popular operating system in the world despite the massive successful sales of Windows 7.