HP Pavilion dv9000 (9201ca) Audio/video/heat/vista questions

Hi there... I just got the HP Pavilion 9201ca laptop/notebook. I am pretty disappointed at it's speed, especially the graphics...but I was due for an upgrade from my old Athlon XP and it was time to turf the desktop. I knew the graphics wouldn't be that great, but I didn't know they would be too slow to run current games EVEN with their lowest settings... Anyway. I managed to talk Best Buy into letting me have it for 899 cdn +tax (thats about 750$ for you us folks), which is a decent deal. I just can't afford anything with the Nividia 7000 series at the moment, most are close to the $2000 range.

Anyway! Questions, if anyone knows:

1) Has anyone tried the common Nvidia Svideo to Component dongle with this, and if so, did it work to output in HDTV resolution? Also, I have the latest Nvidia 430 driver package which I believe includes display drivers. What happened to the advanced Nvidia features that used to be on my old Nvidia card, with all the screen adjustments and stuff?

2) Can this machine output 6-channel audio by converting the three headphone jack outputs to analog, rear surround/R/L Line out/Centre/Subwoofer? Or does multichannel only work via optical audio out.

I tried optical audio out, it seemed sound was coming from all channels in media player when you use digital optical audio out, but I want to know if it is possible analog as well.

3) The left side of the machine is always hot, is this normal? I've never owned a laptop before.

4) The license on Vista says I can downgrade to XP Pro if I want, and I was also told I can get a copy 64 bit. Can someone tell me how to do this?

Thanks for your help...