You know there’s a problem when most of your customers want to keep using an older product you are trying to slowly phase out instead of a new product you have been pushing for months, spending copious amounts of money solely for its advertising. This is the case of Microsoft, who is doing its best to wean users off the Windows XP and get them to use Vista. However, many users buy new machines and prefer to spend additional money on a XP operating system and thus downgrade their computer rather than give the new OS a chance.

Computer companies seem to be joining in the trend. Just this week, Dell released a statement in which they announced that they will offer systems that run Windows XP, but customers will have to pay and additional fee of $150. This new policy comes just five months after Dell stopped offering the older operating system on its Inspiron series, both desktops and laptops.

The deadline for XP downgrades has been extended twice so far, namely until July 31st, 2009. This is an undeniable sign that plenty of users would rather keep using XP and even pay extra for a downgrade rather than give Vista a chance.

In 2008, it was reported that the market share for Windows XP dropped by 10%, while Vista slowly managed to gain a bit of the market share. However, XP still reigned supreme with 66% market share.

While the downgrade fee may pose a problem to most customers, the bigger issue at hand is that consumers opt for an older version of an operating system, on machines designed to run Vista, without even thinking about giving the latter OS a chance.