Beyond Binary

With Windows 7, Microsoft is hoping to have an operating system that people won't want to downgrade from. That said, it does plan on offering users that option.

Downgrade rights have long been a part of the Windows license for certain versions, particularly for businesses. That said, the option gained notoriety with Windows Vista. With Vista, the downgrade right was not only marketed by computer makers, but, once Microsoft stopped selling XP, some PC makers sold Vista machines that were "pre-downgraded" to Windows XP.

Microsoft is actually expanding that Vista downgrade rights program slightly, the company confirmed on Monday. Under the new program, PC makers will be able to ship pre-downgraded machines based on anticipated demand for those systems. Until now, computers makers could only ship XP-downgraded machines if a particular customer had specified that is what he or she had wanted.

Also, as noted earlier Monday by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft plans a similar program for Windows 7, allowing users to go back not only to Vista, should they choose, but also to Windows XP.

Microsoft hasn't detailed exactly how downgrade rights will work with Windows 7--beyond confirming that users will be able to go back to XP--but presumably the rights will be attached to the Ultimate and Professional .

Businesses with volume-licensing deals covering Windows have long had the right to use any earlier version of Windows with their PCs.

Bowing to continued demand, Microsoft has again extended the life of Windows XP.

Three months after Microsoft stopped selling new copies of Windows XP, the software remains a top seller on Amazon.com.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

Although the largest PC makers can't sell XP anymore (except for ultra-low-cost machines), they can sell Vista Ultimate and Vista Business machines with XP discs in the box, or even Vista machines that are "factory downgraded" to Windows XP.

That option was supposed to go away early next year, as Microsoft was going to stop supplying Windows XP media after January 31. However, the company now says it will offer the discs through July 31, giving the option a six-month extension. (Update: PC makers will also be able to sell the factory downgraded machines online as well.)

In a statement provided to CNET News, Microsoft tried to put the best face on the move.

"As more customers make the move to Windows Vista, we want to make sure that they are making that transition with confidence and that it is as smooth as possible," Microsoft said. "Providing downgrade media for a few more months is part of that commitment, as is the Windows Vista Small Business Assurance program, which provides one-on-one, customized support for our small-business customers."

CEO Steve Ballmer said on Thursday in France that 180 million copies of Vista have been sold, but he noted that businesses continue to move at their own pace. When asked about whether companies should move to Vista or wait for Windows 7, even Ballmer said it depends on the business.

"So, my point isn't to encourage you to do it immediately; of course, we'd love you to do it immediately," Ballmer said. "My real advice is to do it in the natural rhythm of your PC upgrade cycle...Most of you will not upgrade the software on existing hardware. Some will. Most of you will actually choose to buy new machines when you move forward, and so we should work with you in that context."

The less major computer makers, known as system builders in Microsoft parlance, are still able to sell XP machines without having to do the Vista downgrade thing. That option is set to end Jan. 31 and Microsoft says that date isn't being extended.

Microsoft stopped selling Windows XP on June 30, though it continues to be available as retail supplies last. It has been a top seller on Amazon for some time, and several versions of XP are still among the retailer's top 25 best-selling software titles.

The six-month extension for XP discs was noted earlier by The Register, a tech news site.

Facing a June 30 deadline to stop selling PCs with Windows XP, the world's largest computer makers are getting creative.

Taking advantage of the "downgrade rights" offered as part of the Windows Vista license agreement, Hewlett-Packard and Dell both plan to offer machines loaded with XP well beyond June.

Technically, the computers will be Vista Business or Vista Ultimate machines that have been factory downgraded to XP at the customer's request. In practice, they are more like XP machines that come with an already paid-for upgrade to Vista when and if the customer chooses to do so.

HP said it plans to continue selling the "pre-downgraded" desktops, notebooks, and workstations to its business customers until July 30, 2009. Dell is already pitching the same option on its Web site and promising the models will stick around long after it stops taking standard XP orders on June 18. Other computer makers tell CNET News.com they are still exploring what to do but also want to sell XP beyond June 30.

There are limits to the approach being taken by HP and Dell. Only the Business and Ultimate flavors of Vista come with downgrade rights, meaning consumer machines can't be sold in a similar fashion.

While companies can offer pre-downgraded machines via their Web site, things get a little more complicated when it comes to buying a PC at retail stores. It may be possible for customers to buy such a machine, but just how this will work--and if stores will offer such an option--is not totally clear. The tricky issue is that, to stay within Microsoft's terms, the customer has to somehow "request" the XP downgrade.

All of this prompts the real question: Why won't Microsoft just extend the deadline? The company's rationale that customers and computer makers aren't demanding a longer life for XP seems to be increasingly implausible.

Kevin Kutz, a director in Microsoft's Windows unit, said that the downgrade-rights option meets customer needs.

"While (computer makers) continue to see large numbers of customers making the transition to Windows Vista, there are some pockets--like small business--that need a little more time," Kutz said in a statement. "And from what we've heard from our partners, the downgrade rights option fulfills that need."

The pre-downgraded PC option is just the latest way that PC makers have responded to stronger-than-expected demand. After shifting largely to Vista after its January 2007 mainstream launch, Dell and others quickly began adding more XP options in response to customer requests.

For some time now, computer makers have been selling machines with an XP recovery disc as a .

Lenovo, for example, plans to keep offering an XP recovery disc with some Vista models through January 2009, according to InformationWeek.

The latest twist is the machines, like the ones HP and Dell will sell beyond June 30, that have Vista rights but contain XP pre-installed.

As for whether a broader reprieve might yet come for XP, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has left the door open a crack.

"XP will hit an end-of-life," Ballmer said in Belgium recently, according to Reuters. "We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments."

CNET News.com's Erica Ogg contributed to this report.

Frustrated with Vista's sluggishness, some people have been turning to a utility called vLite, which out components of the operating system deemed unessential.

Although the move does offer frustrated Vista users an option other than going back to XP or switching to a Mac, Microsoft said Wednesday that it doesn't endorse such changes to Vista's setup.

"Microsoft does not recommend using any tool to strip out applications from Windows Vista prior to installing it on your system, as it may affect your ability to download future Windows updates and service packs, and may cause your system to become unstable," the company said in an e-mail to CNET News.com.

The company didn't mention downgrading to XP or switching to a Mac, but I'm guessing Microsoft doesn't really want you doing those things either.

Microsoft does have a project under way, as part of its Windows 7 development process, to create a slimmed-down Windows kernel. Microsoft has refused to offer further details on the MinWin effort, beyond comments made by a Microsoft engineer at a university lecture last year.

After beta testing Windows 95, David Karp was impressed with how much better the operating system was than Windows 3.1. Still, he had a gripe or two.

To share his experiences, Karp started a Web site called "Windows 95 Annoyances" where he posted some of the pet peeves, as well as some workarounds.

What began as a hobby to make his work computer better, eventually became his work. Karp has written nearly a dozen books chronicling the annoyances of each Windows release.

Needless to say, Vista has given Karp another book's worth of material--664 pages worth, in fact. Windows Vista Annoyances is fresh off the press. Karp took a few minutes to chat about the year-old operating system. Below is an edited transcript.

You also wrote a book or two on "XP annoyances." Did you have more or fewer things to write about with Vista?
Karp: Vista was a little bit of a change of pace for me. I've written Annoyances books going back to 1996. Windows Vista posed a little bit more of a problem for me, or I should say a challenge? It wasn't that it had more annoyances or fewer annoyances. The issues with Vista were more complex. With earlier versions of Windows, you had simple things like programs crashing and features not working.

The problems in Vista are tricky and, with a book like mine, I don't just write about problems. I only write about problems that I can solve or at least that I can work around. The ones in Vista took a little bit more time and a little more creativity to solve.

For example, there's a problem a lot of people have with Vista and that's what's affectionately been coined the "green ribbon of death." It's the little green progress bar that goes across the top of Windows Explorer and sometimes it just seems to linger there and everything stops working. That little green ribbon is the symptom of a lot of problems and they are all quite different. There's one having to do with codecs for video files and there is one that has to do with security when copying files over a network.

A fair number of people have been annoyed by Vista. What's on the top of your list?
Karp: The thing that ticks me off most about Vista is probably a minor quibble to most people. But it hits me every day. There is a feature--it's kind of convoluted--that allows Windows Explorer to show folders containing different items in different ways. For example, if you look at a folder full of photos or videos, you see thumbnails. If you look at a folder full of MP3s, you'll see a detailed list of artist names and track titles and track numbers. Basically, Windows Explorer is designed to automatically show you a different view for different types of files to show you the relevant information. The problem is it gets it right infrequently. It gets it wrong most of the time. It will show pictures as music files. It should be something that's so simple, I think that's part of why I am annoyed by it.

When you talk to other people about Vista, what do you hear most often?
Karp: There's kind of two camps when you are talking to people who use Vista. There's the "I can't believe I upgraded to Vista; how do I get back to XP?" What's funny about that to me is that I pretty much heard exactly the same thing when XP came out six years ago: "Oh my God, I hate XP. How do I get back to Windows 98?" What I think whenever I hear that kind of a comment is, "Yeah, I get it, it's frustrating to use and a lot of the things don't work, but the previous version wasn't any better, you're just used to it. You are used to all of the problems. You know how to get around all the quirks."

In the other camp are the people who use Vista and aren't looking for a way to downgrade. They recognize the things that it does well, and they also recognize the things it doesn't do well.

Everybody sees that Vista has shortcomings. It's kind of divided on how severe those shortcomings appear. Some people are just willing to throw it away and say, "Hey, give me the older version." Other people notice the shortcomings and see them, but feel they can live with them.

My book is written toward both camps. To be honest, I very rarely talk to anyone who loves Vista and is just enamored with the whole experience, which is really a shame. You talk to any Mac fan and they just love every single product that Apple throws at them.

It's not that the Mac is any better than Windows, it's just that people like it better. Windows users don't have any problem seeing the faults of their platform, which I respect. One of the reasons that I wrote this book is the book helps fix the problems.

You don't just note annoying things. You also offer tips on workarounds. What are some of the best things people can do to improve their Vista experience?
Karp: The first thing that I felt like fixing when I was playing with Vista...is the search tool. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to promote this new search tool. At the top of every Windows Explorer window, there's a little search box. You type something into the search box and right away you get all the matching files in the current folder and subfolders. The problem is that it doesn't work very well. Often the searches are out of date. You can be looking at a folder full of JPEG files and in the search box say, "Show me all the JPEG files" and it will show you nothing. Other times it will just take a long time to show search results. The search is something that I use quite a bit. It's how I find my stuff.

The good thing is there are several things you can do to improve searches, like indexing more locations. You can tell the search tool where to index. By default it only indexes files in your documents folder. It doesn't index files anywhere else, for example, your desktop. There are some really easy ways to go into the search tool and add new places to be indexed and remove places you don't need, so your searches can be faster.

Another thing you can do to speed up and improve searches is to remove Vista's built-in support for ZIP files. Vista supports Zip files out of the box. Removing that does require a registry hack. Once you get rid of it, you can install another program to handle zip files which has the added benefit of doing a better job. By removing the ZIP (support), it speeds up searches.

How did you get into the business of writing about annoyances?
Karp: In 1995, I was a beta tester for Windows 95. Being the geek that I am, I wanted to play with it and I wanted to see what I could do with that. Windows 95, which had plenty of its own problems, was just such a huge leap. Microsoft has done nothing like it since. There were so many things right off the bat that were so obviously done wrong...some of which still don't work in Vista today.

Features like those were things I was interested in fixing. This was going to be my computer. This was something I was going to use for my business, and I wanted it to work better. I wanted it to be faster. I wanted it to not crash so often.

I started a silly little Web site called Windows 95 Annoyances and started listing some of the problems I had found and some of the corresponding solutions. Some of the problems didn't have solutions. Almost immediately other people started writing in. A few months later, an editor at O'Reilly saw this page. He said, "Hey, how would you like to put this into a book?" I said, "OK." It's been about a dozen books, and here we are at Windows Vista.

Do you think Microsoft will keep you busy full time, or will you have to move on to Mac or Linux annoyances?
Karp: I never seem to run out of material. There always seems to be something to write about. It isn't just annoying little problems you can fix. I write about different ways to hack the system, how to change the start-up logo and the shut-down logo. No matter what Microsoft does, there are always going to be a lot of things that drive people nuts. Look how many people want to go back to Windows XP. That software was written in 2001.

I don't see any danger in running out of annoyances. There actually is a Linux annoyances book. I didn't write it. I don't think a Mac annoyances book would ever sell because Mac people don't find their computers annoying. Whether they are or not is a different matter.

What's next for you?
Karp: Some rest. I put a lot of time into this book. There's a book I've been wanting to write on eBay, a strategy guide. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is coming out in a few months, so expect to see a second edition of my book.