Worth the downgrade?

Okay, I bought a studio 15, wonderful computer, little to no issues so far, I did a clean reformat of Vista when I got it, customized it a bit, ran pcmark and such (pcmark scores averaged at 4800). But now I see that people have figured out how to downgrade the studio to xp. Personally I don't have any issues with the GUI of Vista, I'm fine with it, just like I was with XP. But would there be any real advantages to going back to XP? Would I get more power? Would my computer run for longer? Run cooler? (it never gets too hot, so this isn't much a worry) Would it really be worth it? I'm a computer science student, in university, and majority of the time I just use the computer for class work, fairly intense sometimes, and some light gaming here and there. An increase in performance would be nice, but if its not substantial (more than 10%) then it doesn't seem at all worthy. What are some other people's thoughts? I want some help making this choice, as I don't want to waste my time installing XP only to see its not worth the trouble.

 

why insist on an either/or scenario?

1) shrink your vista partition
2) create new partition
3) install xp on the new partition
4) enjoy your dual-boot setup

 

what's the advantage of dualboot? i mean aside from having access to two OSs...longer battery on xp? cooler on xp?

 

no. I was just suggesting another option.

battery and heat gen would be about the same. Perhaps the resource hungry Vista may chew a little bit more power - but I wouldn't think it would be noticeable on overall battery life to joe consumer. I much prefer Vista64 to XP64 anyday.

...and if you disable the unneeded services, it's really quite peppy.

 

He can test and find out for himself he dual boots.

 

I've used Linux, Unix, Win XP, Vista 32, ect ect. Vista is not that bad. Yes it is a pig, but so was XP when it came out. A lot of the annoying features can be turned off anyhow, and it definitely can be annoying trying to find all the drivers you need to get everything working on Dell's locked down PCs.

 

I tried putting XP on my S17 when I got it. It wasn't all that difficult, but there are some devices you just can't get XP drivers for, like the IR receiver, but that may be a minor issue for some. I also had an issue with XP installed where the computer would go to sleep, then wake up 10 seconds afterwards, or would just not go to sleep at all when I closed the lid.

I then did a clean install of Vista and made some changes (turned off Windows Defender, User Account Control, turned off sidebar, customized Explorer view, etc.). I have to say that, although you do have to take some time to reconfigure Vista to get rid of the annoying features, it's not as bad an OS as people say it is. Also, there are Vista drivers for all the devices, so everything works. And Vista really is much prettier than XP. It's also the "wave of the future," so to speak, since Microsoft's next OS will be Vista-based, and not a completely new platform.

If you do want to put XP on, you can. Just be aware that you may not get working drivers for all your devices. Also, install the webcam driver by all means, but don't load the actual webcam software until the end of your install. As near as I can tell, that was what caused my sleep problem.