Microsoft was supposed to terminate so-called XP downgrade rights with the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which went to beta this week. But now it says it's not going to because people continue to cling to the thing.

With 74% of the enterprise still on XP, Microsoft has to pay attention when its business customers tell it, as it says, that "removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing, given the rights change would be made for new PCs pre-installed with Windows 7 and managing a hybrid environment with PCs that have different end-user rights based on date of purchase would be challenging to track."

So XP will continue to be installed until Win7 is in its grave in 10 years time.