XP upgrade From Vista

[Borzak]

I have a bunch of extra boxed XP sets and I ordered a new laptop that came with XP only. Can you "upgrade" from Vista to XP - IE a downgrade or does it require a full set of XP to install?

[Hachima]

Can I downgrade my OEM version of Windows Vista Business to Windows XP Professional?

Yes. OEM downgrade rights for desktop PC operating systems apply to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate as stated in the License Terms. Please note, OEM downgrade versions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate are limited to Windows XP Professional (including Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and Windows XP x64 Edition).

End users can use the following media for their downgrade: Volume Licensing media (provided the end user has a Volume Licensing agreement), retail (FPP), or system builder hologram CD (provided the software is acquired in accordance with the Microsoft OEM System Builder License). Use of the downgraded operating system is governed by the Windows Vista Business License Terms, and the end user cannot use both the downgrade operating system and Windows Vista Business. There are no downgrade rights granted for Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium.


Edit: More info at You May Not Have to Run Vista! ~ A Canadian Geek

Basically if you have Business or Ultimate you can call them up and give them the Vista key and they will give you an activation code for XP.

[Algol Devilstar]

Im gonna give them 6 more months to get their shit together on Vista or it's back to XP.

[Furism]

Originally Posted by Algol Devilstar

Im gonna give them 6 more months to get their shit together on Vista or it's back to XP.

What exactly don't you like in Vista?

[Jysin-DW]

Originally Posted by Furism

What exactly don't you like in Vista?

This being broken for over 6 MONTHS now with no fix action in sight. (Thread is 75 pages long and growing by the day)

NVIDIA Forums -> nvlddmkm stopped responding in Windows Vista

Granted, this is an nVidia driver issue but useless hardware drivers makes Vista just as useless to me.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Furism

What exactly don't you like in Vista?

Vista is a very resource-intensive operating system for little purpose other than to be resource intensive. It is not elegant or efficient at all. Granted, you could argue that elegance and efficiency have never been the strong suit of any Microsoft OS. But Vista is a whole different animal.

Consider, for example, the refrigerator. What is the purpose of a refrigerator? To keep food cold, preserved, and organized in one location. Now, let's say I could buy an elaborate refrigerator with tons of useless bells and whistles, a locking mechanism on the door, a 10-character digital password required to open that door, and all sorts of engravings and flourishes on the surface of the door. But at the end of the day, are those "features" going to help a) keep the food cold and preserved, or b) keep the food organized? No. They are useless clutter for my purposes, and occasionally, such features might actually interfere with the primary purposes of the refrigerator. Thus, I might be tempted to buy a refrigerator that performs the primary goals as well as the fancy kind, but that does so in an easier and more manageable way.

You could apply Occam's razor to Vista and essentially gut it to shreds, and you'd end up with XP. To me, that implies that the majority of Vista's features are pointless. There are some benefits to Vista, in theory, such as the higher RAM limit and so forth. But those benefits, by and large, are negated by the heavy system requirements just to keep Vista up and running.

That's not to say that overcomplication is a problem unique to MS products. Many of Apple's latest software and OS upgrades have added useless clutter, as well. Unfortunately, that seems to be the trend in operating systems these days: more features and less problem solving. As far as I'm concerned, you can give me more features only after you've perfected the ones you've got, and only if the new features don't interfere with the old ones.

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

I put Ultimate on my machine (E6300, 2GB RAM, 8800 GTS, 1TB RAID) after I got Technet in June. It is ok but Millie is right there is a lot of useless crap. If you don't have a beast of a box don't bother IMO.

One thing that irritated me to no end was how they changed the file explorer. I'm a fan of the "if it aint broke don't fix it" mantra.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Jaytee Bushwacker

I put Ultimate on my machine (E6300, 2GB RAM, 8800 GTS, 1TB RAID) after I got Technet in June. It is ok but Millie is right there is a lot of useless crap. If you don't have a beast of a box don't bother IMO.

One thing that irritated me to no end was how they changed the file explorer. I'm a fan of the "if it aint broke don't fix it" mantra.

Well said. MS' total revamp of the file explorer and menu systems got a great deal of press and was hailed as "revolutionary," but I have to wonder: to what end? What the holy hell was the point? The new menus and navigation are completely nonsensical in many instances, and the interface is counterintuitive. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that ANYONE was having a hard time using XP's menu bars. Why was this change needed, then? This is a perfect example of "fixing" something that isn't broken to begin with just for the sake of change, and ending up with a broken result.

Two maxims everyone, software developers wholeheartedly included, can live by when designing products:

1) If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
2) Just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should.

[Incognitogamer]

I dunno Millie. I have been using Vista Ultimate x64 for a few months now and I find alot of things that used to take time, or just plain not work in XP work better and faster in Vista. Granted, I also agree with Jaytee above you that if you don't have a beastly box to run Vista well, then I wouldn't advise it.

My only beef with Vista is that it doesn't share files with XP easily... drives me nuts because of the 3 computers at my house only 1 is on Vista right now and it can't see files that are shared by the XP computers and vice versa.