Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Professional Include Downgrade Rights

With the release of Windows 7 the information previously in the Vista Downgrade Rights document is now obsolete.  Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate include downgrade rights to either the corresponding release of Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, or Windows XP Professional.  Use of this advantage is likely to be largely unnecessary.  In any case the end user is responsible for reinstalling a downgrade version and must have a disc with a valid license lying around to be able to use to reinstall.  Technically Microsoft wants you to boot the system once to accept the Windows 7 license agreement before you reformat it.  KillaRad no longer provides official support for OS downgrades except with special cases and agreements.

Windows 7's redesign operates in a similar footprint to Windows XP and Windows Vista for improved performance on lesser hardware compared to Windows Vista.  Additionally if use of Windows XP compatible programs is required, and they can't be made to operate ideally in Windows 7, the user can choose to purchase Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate.  These versions of Windows 7 include a feature called Windows Virtual PC.  This gives the user a free copy of Windows XP Professional to operate in a virtualized system running on Windows 7.  After configuring this Virtual Windows XP Pro, the user can install other programs in the virtual XP system and then later run these programs seamlessly inside Windows 7 off of the Start Menu.

For this reason, don't worry about downgrading a state of the art system that already has Windows 7.  Home editions do not include downgrade rights.  If you have a PC with Windows 7 Home Premium you can acquire an Anytime Upgrade to move up to Windows 7 Pro which would give you Windows Virtual PC.

USB devices that don't have Vista or Windows 7 drivers can for example can be used with XP drivers in the virtualized XP system.  Your mileage may vary with regards to particular devices and their quality of support.

Personally I've found with my HP ScanJet, the USB integration feature of Windows Virtual PC doesn't automatically attach the scanner to the XP system each time.  My PrecisionScan software can't be run seamlessly due to this, and I have to scan only with the full virtual XP system launched to the XP desktop.  From there I can manually click Integration Features at the top of the window and attach the scanner from there, and then the scanner buttons and the application work as expected.

We are no longer offering new computers with Windows XP.  Considering that Windows XP has been discontinued, and one day Microsoft will cease to provide security patches, an XP system may not be a good investment for a PC that will be connected to the Internet.  Other software packages may work on XP without official support or extensive quality testing.  Note that for gaming purposes, Windows XP only supports up to DirectX 9.0, and virtualized XP supports no hardware acceleration.  With no hardware acceleration only very old games would be playable.  DOS games can be played with a free application called DOS Box.

I would say consider the case of a computer with Windows 95, 98 or 2000: although I hate to call them obsolete, such systems even with anti-virus and firewall protection are probably unsuitable to be connected to the Internet for security reasons.  With the Virtual XP you can choose to connect to the Internet through your PCs connection or not.  This allows you to, for example, do web design while comparing Internet Explorer 6 and 7 for design compatibility.

However because XP is included in Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate, it is believable that Microsoft will continue to secure Windows XP for some time into the future.  Based on the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 on April 21, 2008, its support cycle would end after "24 months" on April 21, 2010 with an estimated 5-year extended phase support cycle beginning then.  If I understand Microsoft's support policies correctly then Windows XP will reach the end of its official planned lifecycle with no official public patches after April 21, 2015.  By then it would be reasonable that a company would have done its own upgrades or workarounds.

KillaRad Webmaster
Updated June 17, 2011