Looks like it’s official: Microsoft will let PC manufacturers offer a Windows XP downgrade option through July 31st 2009, extending XP’s original death sentence by six months. As I wrote yesterday night when this was still just a rumor, it seemed pretty much inevitable: If Microsoft had denied computer vendors the ability to provide their customers with the operating system which a huge percentage of their business buyers will want, the planet’s major PC companies would have descended on Redmond with pitchforks and torches.

(System builders who were still selling PCs with XP preloaded may still be irate, though–Micorosft is saying that the January 31st deadline will remain for them.)

What does this mean for Windows Vista? Well, the whole point of the downgrade option is that every downgradable PC that’s sold includes a copy of Vista, so this isn’t hurting Vista sales a bit. It is, however, surely depressing Vista usage. But with Windows 7 supposedly arriving in late 2009 or 2010 depending on which Microsoft comments you believe–hey, this is a new version of Windows we’re talking about, it’s obviously going to be 2010–Vista’s tenure as the current version of Windows may already be more than half over.

Maybe Microsoft is resigned to the fact that XP refuses to die and is focused on preparing for a Windows 7 rollout that’s way less bumpy than Vista’s has been. If so, that might permit it stop plotting XP’s demise and permit it to survive for the time being…grudgingly, at least. That would make for a Microsoft whose interests weren’t so much at odds with those of a signficant percentage of the people who use its operating system. Which would be good.

Which raises the question: Once Windows 7 is available, what are the chances that Microsoft will still be dealing with PC users who simply won’t give up Windows XP, which will be close to nine years old by then?

And here’s another question for you, in the form of a T-Poll:

 
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