I'm not sure how many people purchased new hardware with Vista already installed and then replaced the OS with XP. If my experience is any guide then it would be a lot.

I got a new Lenovo T61p loaded w/ 3 GB of RAM and 2.2 Core 2 Duo CPU. With Vista, it's performance was well below that of other much slower machines in my rack. To add to my dislikes, the machine would become unresponsive at times despite my having gone through Lenovo's entire Vista performance optimization steps. This included doing a fresh install of a clean copy of Vista (I'm a MSDN subscriber).

Finally, after about a month of futzing with it I finally took Vista back behind the barn and shot it. With a fresh install of XP SP2, the machine just flies. Very stable and no problems.

I'd also tried installing Vista on a slightly older Sony Viao. Even though the GPU was unablel to do the Aero portion of the OS, it should still have been at least usable. It wasn't. I've also reinstalled XP on this machine and it's now running great.

As far as I'm concerned, I'll wait for SP1 (or even SP2) before trying another Vista install. I can't help but think that there are a lot of other users in my camp.

My next purchase will be Dell since they still offer a choice between XP and Vista.

Jeff -- I apppreciate your problem, but the logic is kind of hard to follow: "I did this downgrade, so a lot of other poeple did also". I am sure there are more than you, not sure there is a "a lot", especially since Microsoft extended the timeframe that XP can be pre-installed.

I am in fact on the opposite side; an older Toshiba Tablet PC that had gotten so slow and buggy with XP; and which on a whim I upgraded to Vista one weekend. My origianl intent was to simply reinstall, but I did not have a floppy drive to load the RAID driver; and since Vista let me load the driver from a USB key, I decided to try it. It is WAY better than XP ever was on the same hardware. I cannot tell you enough how well this thing works.

I am very happy with Vista.

David

I'm with Jeff. I buy for my department and no one wants Vista. If I can get XP good, otherwise people instruct me to wipe off Vista and load XP.

I'm a professional and I tell ya, I cannot find any advantages to Vista. It takes 2GB to perform, and it doesn't do anything except look different.

I have to agree with Jeff and Rog. I've been running Vista since the retail version was released. I started with the 64-bit version but had to switch to the 32-bit one. The weren't and 64-bit drivers coming for some of my hardware. I started with a AMD dual core machine and now have it on an Intel Quad Core with 4GB of RAM. Performance is decent but I'm thinking this machine would fly with XP.

I am the network admin for my company. I just built two computers for the office. I order Vista Business for them but used the downgrade rights to install XP Pro. When we HAVE to go to Vista, I will have the licenses. I've purchased 3 notebook computers in the past month and they were ordered with XP Pro. I had a friend come to me last month because he had purchased a new notebook. He want to know if he could wipe it and install XP.

If someone is buying a new, high-end machine I can see getting Vista. Trying to upgrade a working XP machine to Vista makes no sense to me. If the standalone sales mentioned in the article are any indication, a lot of people feel the same way.

Note to David: Congratulations. I have 19 New PCs and one laptop which were recently purchased with Vista preinstalled, as replacements for 400 to 1000 Mhz XP Machines with 256 MB. The Vista machines are all Intel Duo machines with one GB Ram and 256 Mb PCIe Graphics (incl HP Laptop). After two weeks of people complaining that they wanted their old machines back, I bit the bullet and installed XP on all. Thank Goodness that we have a Multi-license which allows me to downgrade, otherwise . . .
Unlike the other guys here, I definitely will NOT upgrade these machines to Vista. They will be replaced in three or four years with XP still on them.