According to Devil Mountain Software Inc, nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP.The data comes from the InfoWorld Windows Sentinel project. This is a scheme were participating users install a piece of tracking software on their machines which monitors performance and alerts users to possible problems

“Either these machines were downgraded by sellers like Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine,” said Craig Barth, chief technology officer at Devil Mountain. “In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista.”

Barth added: “The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base…. People are taking advantage of Vista’s downgrade rights.”

Although Microsoft retired Windows XP from mainstream availability on the 30 June, under the terms of Microsoft’s end-user licensing agreement, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can be “downgraded” to XP Professional; businesses that purchase Vista Enterprise can also downgrade to XP.

Some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), for example Hewlett-Packard, have continued to offer new business class computers with Windows XP preinstalled by doing the downgrade at the factory.

These are the first publicly available XP downgrade figures based on quantifiable facts, however the problem with this report is that only a limited number of computers were tested and it is unclear whether they were used for business or home use, the 35% figure also includes people who have replaced Vista with a Microsoft Server product or even Linux.

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