From the article: "On the downgrade rights front, users are still able to buy a new PC with an OEM license for a business edition of Windows and then install an earlier version."

What the author fails to mention is not all manufacturers are writing Win 7 drivers for machines being sold with Win 8.x. Those would not be "downgradable".

Besides the normal ghosts and goblins it would be up to the manufactures to provide drivers for win-7 on the win-8 machines as Lady.. has stated

Microsoft has made deals for cheaper win-8 copies if the manufacture do not provide these win-7 drivers,
Know before you buy :)

Out with the old, in with the new. Time to move on

Eight is okay but hoping nine is the right wine :)

Golden said:

Out with the old, in with the new. Time to move on

Nothing wrong with Win 7. It will still be good for almost 5.5 more years.

After that we can all use pc matic to secure win-7 as they say x-p is secure

They have learned they can't be too blatant.

However, they will be trying to prevent consumers from having a choice.

Beggars belief that some people think that is a good thing.

Are we in N.Korea now?

Lady Fitzgerald said:

From the article: "On the downgrade rights front, users are still able to buy a new PC with an OEM license for a business edition of Windows and then install an earlier version."

What the author fails to mention is not all manufacturers are writing Win 7 drivers for machines being sold with Win 8.x. Those would not be "downgradable".

Windows 8 seems in the lifecycle pretty fast too!!!

If you want Windows 8, then you're going to have to settle for Windows 8.1 instead.