With the cost of technology dropping every hour and laptops and desktops becoming more available its no wonder that Microsoft is enjoying the increased sales of Vista. However a recent study by Devil Mountain found that up to 35% of people who participated had a computer that had a Vista license that was downgraded to XP.

Either the vendor (HP, Toshiba, Dell, etc) downgraded the unit or the customer bought XP and downgraded themselves. The results may be a bit skewed as the survey only got 3000 volunteers, hardly a respectable sample size but it does point a trend out. XP is still very alive even though Microsoft stopped support for it.

It's much easier for on line orders to have the unit downgraded. Units that are bought in store come preinstalled with Vista, and the customer has to buy a copy of XP to install it or they have to refuse the EULA and contact the manufacturer to get XP on the system. However, there is rumor that many of the newer units that came out after Microsoft stopped support for XP won't be able to install it due to motherboard restrictions. So it appears that the only choice to get XP is the waning market of older computers with XP. Nothing like a 512mb Celeron Lenovo with XP to make you enjoy your friends Vista computer.