Microsoft plans to continue XP downgrade program for 6 months

Microsoft has allowed OEM customers purchasing Vista to downgrade to XP for quite some time. Originally, Microsoft planned to end this offer on the 31st January 2009 – ITWorld reports that the deadline has just been expanded to July 31st instead.

While this does not affect the downgrade rights themselves (which are granted for an indefinite period of time for some editions of Vista), the end of the campaign will make life significantly more difficult for customers.

The current state of the procedures is simple: serious manufacturers like HP sell you a box with a qualifying license of Vista, but install XP on it instead. This would become impossible after the aforementioned campaign ends: customers would then have to contact Microsoft themselves…

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