Some Vista Users May Have XP Downgrade Rights

I'm working today with my church's Children's Ministries Director, and we're sorting out some Vista issues.  It appears that she is one of the people who runs applications (ACS church software) which doesn't work under Windows Vista.  Since many readers of this blog may be in the situation where they want to run XP Pro instead of Vista due to these kinds of legacy applications, I wanted to pass along what I've discovered about downgrading from Vista to XP Pro.

1. You may already have rights to downgrade.   Key points:

• According to a recent Computerworld article, OEM users of Vista Business and Vista Ultimate have the rights to downgrade from to XP Professional.
• According to the article,"Corporations that acquire Microsoft operating system software through volume license agreements such as Select License, or who have signed up for Software Assurance, can (generally) downgrade any Windows software at any time ". You should consult your EULA for more details or contact your volume licensing consultant.
• Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium customers DO NOT qualify for these downgrade rights.  This is probably just as well - hardware that comes with an OEM install of one of these operating systems is probably not ready for the unforgiving punishment of somebody like me who uses their computer 50-60 hours a week, every week, year round.
• You will have to provide your own CD for installing XP Pro, as well as do the work yourself to set up XP Pro.  My experience suggests that this takes a couple of hours to get the OS up and going, with longer to install updates, Office software, antivirus, drivers, and the like.

The article goes on to describe the process of setting up XP Pro, which involves installing XP Pro with the Vista key (!) and then using the phone activation option to get XP Pro up and running.  In certain circumstances, you may not have XP Pro drivers available for your new hardware (usually if you're buying cheap hardware with lots of proprietary devices built into the motherboard.)

2. You have other options for dealing with those pesky legacy apps include: 

•    Dual Booting, where you have both Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Business installed on the same PC is an option, but you will have to purchase an additional license for XP under this scenario if you bought a PC with Vista preinstalled.  It's one or the other if you purchased Vista with your PC - you can't use the Vista license for both the XP and vista licenses.  If you would like to dual boot, you'll need to purchase another license (and there are some issues you should look into regarding the boot file setup differences between Vista and XP). TechRepublic has some nice instructions here - but you'll generally need an extra hard disk partition set up and will also need to install XP first, followed by Vista due to some arcane issues with the boot.ini file.
• Virtualization, where you run a virtualized version of Windows XP as a separate PC in a window in Vista is also an option, but you may need to purchase additional licenses of Office, XP Pro, and other apps(including client access licenses "CALs" for server apps) to be legal to run these in a virtualized environment.  I'm actually using this for demonstrations of many applications when speaking and using my production Vista laptops (Vista Ultimate).  You will need a lot of RAM to do this (one laptop has 2GB, the other has 4GB RAM), but it works great (although the speed may leave something to be desired).  As an aside, these apps can be used to run virtualized versions of any OS, from DOS to Linux to any version of Windows.  Apps which let you run the virtualized OS include:
  • VMWare
    
    • VMWare Virtual Server (free for personal use from www.vmware.com)
    • VMWare Workstation ($199, this is what I'm using)
  • Microsoft
    
    • Microsoft Virtual PC (free)
    • Microsoft Virtual Server (free)
  • Mac Applications
    • Parallels ($99)
    • VMWare (latest versions are getting good reviews)
• Terminal Services/Citrix type connections, where the application is run on a remote PC and the user gets a window over their internet connection which is controlled with typing and mouse movement from the remote system, is another option.  There are a number of ways to do this:
  • Outsourced options, where a third party (usually the software publisher) runs the application on their server, (where they handle the backups and upgrades).  All you have to do is download the client software and work.  These options are offered by most major accounting software companies (e.g. Thomson and CCH)
  • Local server-based terminal services options, where you run the applications on a local Terminal Services server (like Small Business Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 with Citrix or 2X).  These options have you running the app in Terminal Services mode - and you'll need your IT techie to set this up.  Some applications are not supported by the publisher in terminal services mode, so this may not work, although it may be the best approach for when more than one person needs access to an application at a time.
  • Local workstation based solutions may work for when you need very infrequent access to the other operating system/application.  This would involve taking a spare workstation and connecting it to the network with an installed version of VNC Server (free from www.realvnc.com) whereby you could get access to that machine over the VNC client software.

While I'm using Vista Ultimate as the production OS on most of my systems, certain apps (most notably prior year tax software) are not, and in many cases never will be supported on Vista.  NOW is the time to do this analysis in your firm - not in the heart of busy season.  According to some media reports, this is going to be a difficult tax season on many fronts due to AMT biting more people this year, new IRS regs on paid preparers, and other issues.  With all of the stuff on the technical front, I'd recommend that you get your house in order from a technology perspective ASAP so you can minimize your stress level this winter.

I wish all of you a happy holiday season, and a safe and prosperous 2008.

Best regards, Brian