Microsoft is quick to quote the 40 million Vista licenses it has sold so far – saying 20 million were sold in the first month. But buyers of new computers have always had the option to skip Vista and “downgrade” to XP – something that the above numbers don’t really reflect. These so-called “downgrade” rights have been a big headache for enterprise users going through desktop refresh cycles — and the resellers selling those PCs and promising that XP can be installed. Microsoft has said it will ease this downgrading process, at least at first for its biggest channel partners, Redmond Magazine reports.
“‘The downgrade process we had when we launched the product was actually quite cumbersome,’ said John Ball, general manager of the U.S. System Builders Group at Microsoft. `What we’ve actually done for Gold and Certified partners — and this is the first piece of getting downgrade scenarios where they need to be — is they are able to basically submit their product keys [online] for Vista Business and Vista Ultimate, and they’ll actually get back the product keys for the corresponding Windows XP Pro.’”
