It seems like only yesterday (okay, so it was the day before) that I wrote a blog about Windows 7 not having “downgrade” rights to Win XP nearly long enough for IT departments to actually evaluate Windows 7 safely.  The news of this was from a fairly reliable source as these things go: Gartner.

But maybe, just maybe, Microsoft really isn’t that stupid after all.

Over at Vulture Central is news of assurance from Microsoft that the time limit to “downgrade” to XP is not 6 months, but 18 months!

Stranger though, is one caveat: That Windows XP “downgrade” rights get lost sooner if there’s a service pack for Windows 7.  It’s a strange clause, leaving an even stranger quandry.  Do we then hope for Microsoft to be very slow in developing the first Windows 7 service pack, knowing full well that security holes (like this one, known since January) exist in Windows 7?  Or do we hope for a quick fix to the no doubt countless problems still in Windows 7 (When is an operating system ever bug free?) and with the big patch known as a service pack, lose downgrade rights to Windows XP?  Decisions, decisions…

What is an IT department to hope for?

(Well, other than Microsoft simply giving 18 months of Win XP downgrade rights without the service pack clause, obviously.)

Now that the behemoth that is Windows 7 looms yet closer on the horizon, a lot of IT departments who are still clinging vehemently to XP (And who isn’t?) are left to wonder about just what their future holds as Microsoft is firmly throwing the good old Win32 out the window.  No longer will Windows simply be backwards compatible to all applications.  (Which, historically, is very arguable anyway as anyone who was in charge of the Win 9x migrations to Windows XP will recall.  And let’s just not even mention Win ME, or Win ME 2 Vista.)

In theory at least, Windows 7 offers Windows XP users the best of both worlds.  Windows 7, and a virtual Windows XP SP3.  It’s a combination that should be hard to beat.

On paper.

In the practical application however one niggling (screaming) detail remains.  Why VM a whole Win XP box?!  It’s the question of the day. Microsoft could have used better technologies to VM per-app instead.  Application virtualization would have been a much smoother ride for users.  Again, in theory, Windows 7 has an option sort of like this.  In practice however it really isn’t.  It’s still running a whole VMed WinXP box in the background.

Will Windows 7′s virtualized Windows XP be enough for migrations to go well?  It’s an interesting question.

And it’s a question that’s even more muddled by Microsoft’s licensing.  Buy the right license of Windows Vista and you can happily “downgrade” to Windows XP.  But for some odd reason, the same is not exactly true for Windows 7.  Those downgrade rights disappear on April 23rd, 2010. After that, you can only downgrade to Windows Vista.  (And who in their right mind would want that?)  So if your solution to Windows 7 migration is to actually install Windows XP on the boxes, you have to buy your Windows 7 boxes right away!

But who is going to do it that way?

IT departments always take time evaluating the migration before they actually move everything over.  (At least those who rightly worry.)  This process can easily take more than six months!

So, thanks to Microsoft, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

What is the right answer?  We just may see IT departments continuing to cling vehemently to Windows XP for a while yet, simply because thanks to Microsoft’s poor choice in downgrade rights they’ll have no choice.