Will Asus provide an XP CD to customers who just purchased a Vista Loaded Notebook?

Hello. I recently purchased an Asus F8SV-B1. I do not want to use the Vista Home Premium OS that it comes with so I bought XP Professional from New Egg tonight. Shortly after I bought it, I relized that Asus may be able to mail me one of their XP CD's that they packaged in their older systems for free or atleast sell me one for cheap. Does anyone with an Asus notebook know if this is possible? I hope that I did not just waste $140...Thank you in advance.

 

I'd like to know this too!

 

AFAIK, they don't offer anything like that. And M$ said they were rid of XP when Vista came out, but then suddenly changed their minds when a mob of angry corporate customers with tons of complaints about Vista lynched them and essentially forced them to continue selling it for the next little while (in limited quantities, supposedly whatever is left on the market). XP is on the way out, Vista is on the way in, and that's how Microsoft wants it since they want to railroad us into using their new advanced activation crap and DRM and other-nasty-things-that-make-us-go-wow-but-really-control-us loaded into Vista.

As far as licensing goes, "downgrading" mostly applies only to people who have volume licensing (ie: corporate):

http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2007/11/01/5815354.aspx

The best you can expect is a driver CD *IF* they even bothered to make one. Otherwise, you'll have to find a guide if someone made one, or follow a guide for another model which is similar enough to cover most of the components.

ASUS tends to use the same supplier for multiple units, so based on the vendor ID and the part ID in the Device Manager, you *should* be able to find suitable drivers for most of the equipment.

 

So it's not only me who's thinking that we are all being bullied into Vista rather than being convinced by its features...

I'm sure DRM and user monitoring has something to do with it, but maybe the essential reason is the perpetual IT cycle:
1. Buy crappy bloated OS that requires faster hardware to run as fast as your earlier OS
2. Buy faster hardware because you want your new OS to run as fast
3. Buy new applications that are even more bloated, and require even faster hardware
4. Buy the even faster hardware
5. While you're at it, buy a new OS because it has all the drivers for the new hardware that you needed to buy included
Wait! This is not a good enough reason. Oh, no problem, let's just make the new OS colorful and advertise it heavily, and if that doesn't work let's just bully people into buying it. Like, put it on all the new machines without allowing the user to opt out of it (which in my book is already illegal), convince manufacturers to stop offering drivers for the old OS, and app developers to stop providing updated versions for it.
6. GOTO 1

 

Although most of the dealers that specialize in modding asus notebooks know where to get the drivers for vista 64 and xp for notebooks that asus themselves say "sorry we don’t support" most of the users out there dont know how and where they can load xp onto their asus notebook that came with vista. Personally i think this is deplorable service for a company that specializes in "#1 service in the world". Other brands have all these drivers. Why not asus? Well i am not one to scream fire in a theater and i may get lynched for talking crap about Asus being a top dealer but i think the power is with the people not the dealers. It has been almost a year now from vistas launch. asus is the last to come out with all the drivers and support. to date they still don’t support xp on their notebooks while their dealers do and to date they still do not support vista 64 bit while their dealers do. I think people should be concerned about this and the fact that this asus forum is one of the most active as well as problematic forums out off all the sections on notebook review. I wish everyone happy holidays and i hope all the asus fans here get the service and support they paid for especially all the c90s users. Asus has been known to burry support for notebooks (I won’t mention which but there have been many). I feel this is very questionable to tell people “sorry we don’t support” while dealers such as my self a few others clearly do. I am not happy with the support I am receiving as a dealer at all. From the thousands of posts I read every day neither are their customers when dealing with software support. I feel it is their obligation to make xp drivers and vista 64 drivers available to all. It is a disservice to their customers to “say sorry we do not support for a year now”.

 

When you said that, this came to mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci2D1ig4df4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTpEoZYFLkw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAUlK8_2VE

(the last one is kinda funny )

 

It's funny, since I sense a lack of attention towards the enthusiasts and the technical-savvy people, ie: the people who made ASUS what it is through word of mouth. When selling computers, unless the customer knows exactly what they want, the majority of people ask for a recommendation for parts and guess what? Most of the time people end up recommending an ASUS or whatever is suitable to the client's budget.

It's ironic that they would be doing something that is against what made them what they are...

 

Yeah they should do it.

I still find it funny that the C90S comes with everything on the driver CD

 

Well I found out that this "downgrade" to XP program only applies to you if your notebook came preloaded with Vista Business or Ultimate. Since teh F8SV-B1 comes with Premium, I am left out in the cold. No idea why Microsoft feels the need to make four different versions of its OS and upgrade versions on top of that, one would be enough.

As long as I get XP Pro working on my system I am happy though, I will get over the extra money it costs to "downgrade" my new laptop. I bought the OEM system builder CD off new-egg. Hopefully this does not give me any problems when installing on a freshly formatted HD with no previous version of Windows. My laptop is not here yet so I can not try it out to see if it works but after reading the OEM packaging I am a bit scared. It says "If the individual software license is for a desktop OS or application software, it also must be preinstalled on the hard drive of the fully assembled computer system, using the OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK)" Does this mean this is an OEM upgrade version? I read all about the OEM version online and supposedly it is the full version and I am able to install XP on a fresh HD. I am a bit confused.

*Sigh* After all this is done I still have to install XP on my old computer after reformatting with this same CD. I think I am going to have to call into customer service and tell them "I upraded my system" just to get a new CD Key for software I bought. How ridiculous. Sometimes I hate Microsoft.

Ok rant over. =D

 

Let me give you a hint.
1 version of Vista: $$$
4 versions of Vista: $$$ + $$$ + $$$ + $$$


As to the upgrade, usually XP "upgrade" disks are fully functional kits that can be used to install the system from scratch, but are only legally valid together with the original license key. So you're probably fine. But I don't know details about your particular OEM upgrade disk, so it might be different.