windows 7 downgrade to vista without disk

Here’s the bottom line taking pricing and installation headaches into consideration: As long as Windows 7 is available on new PCs, buying a Windows 8 Pro machine with downgrade rights really only makes sense if you plan on returning to Windows 8 at a later date. Also, if you buy a Windows 7 machine before January 31, 2013, you have until February 28 to purchase a Windows 8 upgrade for $15. So you will also save a bit of money if you purchase a Windows 7 machine instead of Windows 8. You can find comparable Windows 8 machines for around $100 to $200 more.

Amazon, for example, is selling a limited number of 15.6-inch Samsung laptops featuring a 2.4 GHz Intel Core i3-2370M processor, 6GB RAM, a 750 GB HDD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium for $500.īest Buy has a 14-inch Asus laptop with a 2.3Ghz Intel Pentium processor, 4GB RAM, a 320GB HDD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium for $300. Second, even though Microsoft and its partners are pushing Windows 8, you can still find Windows 7 machines for sale on Amazon, Best Buy, and Dell, to name a few locations. This contradicts pretty much everything Microsoft has ever posted online about downgrade rights.īut after scouring Microsoft’s online support pages, checking out real-world downgrade experiences on various forums, and then confirming the process with Microsoft’s press team, we can now share the truth about how downgrades work for anyone with a PC running Windows 8 Pro. Another representative said a Windows 7 disc image would be built into new Windows 8 Pro machines. When PCWorld researched this, sales and support reps for both Microsoft and major PC manufacturers told us two different stories.Ī Dell representative said that to downgrade from Windows 8, you needed to buy a new, unused copy of Windows 7-thus making the whole point of having downgrade rights pointless. We ran a quick comparison survey of machines from HP, Dell, and Toshiba, and found that an upgrade to the Pro version of Windows 8 increased system prices anywhere between $35 and $100.Īnd even when the price delta is small enough to justify buying a Windows 8 Pro machine (complete with downgrade rights!), the downgrade process can still be difficult to figure out. Unfortunately, machines loaded with Windows 8 Pro will demand a pricing premium over similarly spec’d Windows 8 systems.

Windows 7 downgrade to vista without disk