This is an only a good alternative if you don't want to see the phishing site that always pops up on the latest version.
That's actually a pretty bad suggestion. The new versions actually make the message look bad and not official (it doesn't render all the styling and clickable-links anymore).
The phishing messages also show up in older versions, but the message looks even more real (with all the styling that made people fall for it). So, if you want someone to fall for it, tell them to downgrade their Electrum version.
OP:
DON'T DOWNGRADE. Just change servers until the transaction goes through without the malicious message. All the hacker can do is show that message. So, if you don't download anything from the fake link, nothing bad will happen.