Bizarre Windows 7 Downgrade/Upgrade Policies Coming

Over at the ZDNet U.S. site, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has posted about what will apparently be a new low in bizarre downgrade/upgrade policies involving Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. It sounds like Microsoft has outdone themselves this time - check the link for details. This is like watching a train wreck in progress. I wonder if this insane "Downgrade/Upgrade" policy will even survive until the release of Win7... or put another way, how long will it be before Microsoft starts back-pedaling, and extending the cutoff date for XP "downgrades"?

My take on it is this. Besides their obvious determination to stamp out the XP holdouts, this new policy might actually coax some corporate installations to change to Vista. That would then artificially inflate the overall sales numbers for Vista (similar to selling Vista Business with an XP "downgrade" included, then booking the sale as Vista regardless of which version the customer actually uses), and thus makes Vista look like a bit less of a disaster in the end.

Here's my question. While it is obvious why users might want to keep the right to run XP, even though they are forced to buy Win7, who in the world is going to buy Win7, which honestly is nothing more than Vista with Lipstick (I'm thinking of copyrighting that...) and then downgrade to the original Vista (without Lipstick), or as someone here for whom I have great respect terms it very appropriately, "Vistaster"?

jw