A community-based testing network, Devil Mountain Software, Inc. claims that its statistics indicate that more than one of every three new PCs sold is being downgraded from the Vista OS to the Windows XP OS.

Craig Barth, Chief Technology Officer at Devil Mountain, stated, "Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine. In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista."

Barth went on, "The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base. People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights."

While Microsoft stopped making Windows XP available from mainstream retailers, some OEMs have continued to offer it with new PCs by doing the XP downgrade at their factories. HP has said that it will continue to offer the XP downgrade option through July 2009.

Maybe Microsoft should start telling consumers that Windows Vista is one third better than Windows XP!