Consider this your friendly reminder that we're fast approaching Microsoft's cutoff date for providing its hardware partners with copies of Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate to pre-install on new systems. Once October 31, 2014 (Halloween) comes and goes, OEMs like Dell and Hewlett-Packard can still sell whatever inventory is left of PCs running any of those three versions of Windows 7, but they won't be able to order any more copies.If you're bothered by this, take solace in the fact that Microsoft's arbitrary end-of-sales deadline doesn't apply to Windows 7 Professional -- Microsoft hasn't yet announced when it will stop selling copies of Windows 7 Pro to OEM partners, so for the time being, businesses worried about making a transition to Windows 8/8.1 don't need to fret.Though sales of PCs pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate are quickly coming to an end, don't confuse that to mean that Microsoft will stop supporting any of those operating systems. Microsoft will continue to dish out security updates up through January 14, 2020.What about downgrade rights? You can still purchase a new PC with an OEM license for Windows 8.1 Pro and downgrade to Windows 7 Professional or Windows Vista Business.