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Dave, Microsoft offered a "downgrade" license for Vista to XP for a long time. They offered a downgrade license for W7 initially too (they may still do it). If you ordered a PC from Dell or HP you could order it with Windows XP up until a little while ago. I ordered a machine for our office about a year ago and still had XP pre-installed by Dell. I think what finally killed the XP pre-installs was that everything was going 64-bit, and memory requirements finally exceeded what the OS could handle. I would imagine that you can order Windows 7 pre-installed on a PC with a downgrade license for quite a while. Microsoft alluded that W7 was going to be another of their 'extended support releases', so this may be happening for a while. -Nick -----Original Message----- From: David McFarlane [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 4:02 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Windows 8 Reaches RTM Milestone So, are folks really planning to keep ordering machines with Win7 instead of Win8 as long as possible, and then reformat Win8 machines to install Win7 after they can no longer buy machines with Win7? That's fine, but, depite an earlier comment, it does seem to involve a lot of "involuntary" action :). -- dkm At 8/6/2012 03:51 PM Monday, Gary Schrock wrote: >We were able to order machines with XP for a long time after Vista came >out, can't remember if it was all the way up until 7 came out or not. >Now, you couldn't walk into Best Buy and get a machine without Vista >(for that matter, I think the home stores of the various PC >manufactures didn't give the option, I think it was mainly their >business oriented stores). There were some laptops that I ran into >that were difficult to get drivers for XP, so that's really what to me >became the biggest issue. 7 ended up decent enough that one didn't >really need to avoid it. > >I'm guessing MS is going to get the same type of reaction from >businesses for Win8 as they did for Vista, and get forced to keep Win >7 around far longer than they might want to. > >On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 3:47 PM, David McFarlane <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Indeed, but can we ever voluntarily opt out of eventually > deploying each new > > version of Windows? Especially when it becomes impossible to order > > new PCs without it? Did we succeed in voluntarily avoiding Vista, or 7? > > > > -- dkm > > > > > > At 8/6/2012 03:37 PM Monday, Jon Galbreath wrote: > >> > >> It's a voluntary action to run the installer, so yes. > >> > >> Jon Galbreath, MCSE > >> Systems Administrator > >> International Studies and Programs > >> Helpdesk: 517-884-2148 > >> Ph: 517-884-2144 > >> [log in to unmask] > >> > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: David McFarlane [mailto:[log in to unmask]] > >> Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 3:24 PM > >> To: [log in to unmask] > >> Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Windows 8 Reaches RTM Milestone > >> > >> But will we have any choice? Do we ever? > >> > >> -- dkm > >> (Sorry, late to the party, was gone on vacation) > >> > >> > >> At 8/1/2012 03:10 PM Wednesday, Stehouwer, Matt wrote: > >> >I would have to 2nd that. > >> > > >> >Matt Stehouwer > >> >Technology Manager > >> >Michigan State University > >> >College of Natural Science Deans Office > >> >288 Farm Lane RM 154 > >> >East Lansing, MI 48824 > >> >517 355-9003 | Email: [log in to unmask] > >> > > >> >-----Original Message----- > >> >From: Gary Schrock [mailto:[log in to unmask]] > >> >Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 2:41 PM > >> >To: [log in to unmask] > >> >Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Windows 8 Reaches RTM Milestone > >> > > >> >On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 2:26 PM, Jon Galbreath <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> > > TechNet and MSDN gets it Aug 15! > >> > > > >> > > Anyone planning to actually deploy this? > >> > > >> >The words "over my dead body" come to mind :).