According to a new report produced for Network World the majority of business owners running Windows Vista computers today have taken up the opportunity to downgrade to Windows XP. The same report also shows that 12 per cent of home users have also downgraded to XP.

Windows XP was withdrawn from retail sale just over a year ago, but still appears to be the system of choice among businesses buying Vista machines. One reason given for business downgrades has been application and hardware compatibility problems, another is that businesses want to provide consistency across their networks which already has working XP computers

Microsoft counts any sale of a Vista-enabled computer as a Vista machine, regardless of what system it actually runs. Some PC manufacturers are allowed to sell machines ‘ready downgraded’ though officially that scheme ends later this month, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft extends this deadline when Windows 7, Vistas replacement is expected to retail on 22 October

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