Act Now and Get a Downgrade to the OS You Really Want, ABSOLUTELY FREE!

It’s looking more and more like the pent-up demand for Windows Vista we’ve heard so much about this past year is really just pent-up demand for Windows XP.

With Vista failing to win over the consumer and enterprise markets in the way it had imagined, Microsoft over the summer quietly began allowing PC makers to offer a “downgrade” option to customers who prefer XP to the pre-installed Vista software. Now the company has gone a step further and extended by five months the deadline to buy Windows XP at retail or with a new PC. Microsoft had planned to cut off XP sales on Jan. 30, 2008, one year after the launch of Vista. Now, it will cut them off on June 30, 2008.

“While we’ve been pleased with the positive response we’ve seen and heard from customers using Windows Vista, there are some customers who need a little more time to make the switch to Windows Vista,” Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Product Management, explained in one of Redmond’s staged interviews. “As it turns out, our official policy as of 2002 is that versions of Windows are available through our retail and direct OEM partners for four years after they ship. Obviously this policy didn’t work with Windows XP, given Windows Vista’s delivery date. As a practical matter, most of our previous operating-system releases were available for about two years after the new version shipped, so maybe we were a little ambitious to think that we would need to make Windows XP available for only a year after the release of Windows Vista.”

Just a little. As Gartner analyst George Shiffler said in late June, Vista’s performance at market so far has been anemic, at best. “The release of Microsoft Windows Vista operating system at the end of January has, so far, failed to stimulate the market in the way many hoped,” Shiffler said. “Our market data suggest Vista has had very limited impact on PC demand or replacement activity.”

Good thing for Microsoft XP is making up for it.