peter green wrote:
>> FWIW - I have a signed letter from a high level Microsoft
>> rep in this country saying that if you buy a uSoft product
>> then you may for free use any older version. I keep it
>> 'somewhere' more for fun than expectation that it would hold
>> water. I suspect too (and seem to recall) that there are M$
>> EULAs that say just the opposite.
>>
>>
> IIRC according to the actual licenses that is true for most volume
> licenses but not most retail licenses.
>
> If you have OEM vista buisness  or ultimate then iirc that comes with
> downgrade rights to XP pro. If you have a lower edition but have access
> to purchase under a volume license scheme then iirc upgrading under that
> will also get you downgrade rights. Retail and retail upgrade copies
> unfortunately don't come with downgrade rights.


After a couple of bad experiences with Vista, we now have only one machine 
at the office that runs it. In fact, it's a dual boot machine (XP/Vista), 
and testing is the only reason we kept Vista on it. Older (but definitely 
not "old") software not working on Vista is the biggest problem for us.

We had three Vista machines that we purchased from Dell, so we got XP CDs 
from Dell support, and reinstalled XP on all three. Since that time, we only 
purchase XP machines -- fortunately, Dell continues to offer the choice of 
OS.

Vitaliy 

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