TechAgility

Microsoft is possibly extending the WinXP downgrade period to some time beyond the Win7 release?

It’s hardly surprising, but does that make it true? No doubt we’ll find out as we go?

In the meantime I can say that I’m enjoying Windows 7 apart from the odd occurrence of Explorer maxing one of the CPU’s to 50% – so far I haven’t found a fix, I just call up Process Explorer and kill the SHLWAPI.dll!Ordinal630+…..etc and all bounces back to normal – at some stage I really would like to get on top of this, but for now I have a workaround.

And I must say I’m seeing windows 7 more in the field these days

UPDATE:

Microsoft Extends Vista to XP Pro Downgrade

OS Availability goes Beyond July 31st 2009

OEM’s can continue to ship XP Pro downgrade OS configurations through April 30th 2010.

Effective immediately, Microsoft has informed that it has extended PC OEM rights to continue shipping  the Vista to XP Pro downgrade OS  on business desktops, workstations and business notebook PC’s beyond the July 31st discontinue date. This means OEM’s will be able to continue to offer the Vista business with downgrade to  XP Pro custom install OS  through April 30th 2010.  PC OEMs can also continue to provide XP Pro and XP Tablet OS restore media  through this extended period.

It’s important to remind customers that Microsoft are still planning to retire XP Pro Mainstream support on April 14th 2009 and will only provide OS security updates beyond that date unless the customer has an Extended Hotfix Support contract. MS Extended Support for XP Pro ends on April 8th 2014.

In addition, Microsoft will allow PC OEMs to structure similar downgrade OS  skus for Win 7 Professional once available. No formal announcement has been made on the General Availability date for Win 7. However, you can anticipate that business desktops, notebooks and workstations will take advantage of this with the release of Win 7 in the October timeframe to allow our customers maximum headroom as they transition away from XP Pro OS.  The Win 7 Professional to XP Pro downgrade OS will also discontinue on April 30th 2010.

written by dcaddick