Microsoft mis-targeted by XP downgrade suit?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 February 2009 04:04

IT Industry - Market

Microsoft faces a class-action suit alleging that the downgrade fee charged to allow the use of Windows XP on a computer sold with a Vista OEM licence was anti-competitive.

When Vista arrived on the market it quickly acquired a less than stellar reputation in some parts of the market.

Some people said that was undeserved, and that Vista worked fine on new computers. The problems, they said, arose when it was loaded onto an older computer.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that argument, a proportion of buyers rejected Vista completely and chose to run XP on their new computers instead.

That included businesses that wanted a consistent operating system across all PCs in the company but weren't ready for a mass migration to Vista. This group was unlikely to have a problem, as Microsoft's volume licensing (and other corporate licences including Software Assurance) includes downgrade rights.

But there's no blanket provision of downgrade rights in Microsoft's OEM licence - the one that applies when you purchase a new PC with Windows preinstalled.

Microsoft does grant downgrade rights [PDF] from Vista Business or Ultimate to any of XP Professional, Tablet PC Edition or Professional x64 Edition.

So why is a Vista Business purchaser suing? Please read on.