Replacing Vista for XP

I have disks for XP. I'm was planning to order a laptop with Vista Home Basic (to avoid upgrade fees) and then reload the OS with XP. But I've never done that before and don't know how difficult, time consuming it is.

Will I face driver dramas? Am I foolish for considering this instead of paying $67 to have it done for me? I figured the other advantage was removing unnecessary lenovo software.

 

Why do you want to downgrade?
XP is ancient, harder to use, less safe, less stable, gives worse battery life... the list goes on.

There's a very short list of legacy applications which do not work on Vista...

 

It's free, and I can get a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (for less $$ than lenovo charges for the upgradeable Vista) once it's been widely confirmed to be MUCH better than Vista. My wife had Vista, granted it was home basic, on her last laptop. It was atrocious with 2gb Ram. With 3gb on her new laptop it's ok, but most people still seem to vote for XP.

This reminds me of another important question: When I do switch to Windows 7 would it be more seamless to do so via the upgrade rights through Vista or do it via fresh purchase and from XP? I don't understand the upgrading process for an OS. Do you have to reload everything from scratch: programs, drivers, data? Or does the new OS pull most of that over for you?

Sorry for my ignorance.

 

Hey Im planning on doing the same thing, I like XP just because Im used to it and i dont think the cons are that bad. It should be fine you just install windows XP but make sure you've downloaded all your drivers first from lenovo's site. Also upgrading OS keeps all your programs, data, and drivers but not all versions of previous OSs can be upgraded

 

XP has been widely confirmed to be much worse than Vista... and 7 has been confirmed to be even better.
Your wife's last laptop was probably full of crapware running in the background.
On polls here on NBR, the vast majority vote for Vista. It had a bad launch but it's great and slick now.

Nixus, isn't it prudent to learn to use a newer OS? Also, so many things are much easier and smarter in Vista...

You can install 7 on your ThinkPad no problemo - but if you get XP you have to do a fresh install.

Oh, and Vista and 7 will acquire most of the drivers you need for you when you do a clean install.

 

OK, I guess you sold me on Vista since it's been fine on the T500 w/ 3Gb.

Should I go with Home Premium, Business 32, or Business 64? Can't imagine I'd take advantage of Ultimate, but tell me if I'm wrong, as I apparently was about XP over Vista.

 

Did I ever say i dont know how to use vista? I've used both and like XP better for my needs, have never had an issue. Not saying anything about one being better than the other, just personal preference

 

In my experience, I've found XP gives a lower battery life than Vista on the same machine. In addition, Vista is a lot more stable, especially after SP1 (and to a certain degree, SP2). I would advise against downgrading.

 

Home Prem is nice (Media Center, etc.) but if you don't need that kind of stuff I'd get Business 64. 64-bit is great to have (over 4 GBs of RAM can be used, among other benefits) but if you use legacy apps or something very specialised check if it will work - also if you use uncommon older peripherlals. Business also has a few nice perks.

 

A lot of times it's not Vista per say, but all the bloatware manufacturers put on their machines which bogs things down. With a clean install and the latest service packs it runs well, my opinion of course.

 

Here are the differences. You'll have to determine which features you need.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_editions#Comparison_chart

 

I agree, I wouldn't go to XP at this point. Stick with Vista and upgrade to 7 if you want. Vista is fine, just not very speedy and keeps hammering the harddrive(don't know why, and yes I know about Superfetch, but it isn't that )

 

Thing is... it IS speedy!
It hits the hard drive for a while on a new system. After a few days it should be done.

It indexes files on the hard drive to make searching much faster. But you can turn that off.

 

I always do.

 

"Why do you want to downgrade? XP is ancient, harder to use, less safe, less stable, gives worse battery life... the list goes on."

I'll take the midroad on this. It's true that XP is old as is old technology. But it still works. So does Vista. I've ridden Vista hard and have never had a crash with it. We have to begin looking at the users who expect to use the same amont of memory as the years progress. Every system that is released expects more memory which comes with the ownership of a computer. Before long XP is a non-solution or an attempt to have time remain still. It won't work.
Renee

 

Thats what I was told, it hits the harddrive for a while and then thing would be ok, but with my X00 it hits the harddrive a lot, especially when first booting. Because of this I shut off Indexing and Superfetch on my T61p when I first got it, but many said that this was bad and to keep it. On my new X200 I kept both on just to see what would happen. Overall though, Vista seems ok, not too bad. Haven't had an catastrophic failures yet.

BTW - I am a huge Knight Rider fan(original series). Look like you are too?

 

I thought about downgrading to XP when I bought my first Vista system about 4 months ago. But once I got familiar with Vista, which took about 10 days, then I was OK it.

If the Event Viewer is a measure of stability, then I would say XP is more stable. I see a lot more non-recurring errors with Vista. There are a lot more Services running with Vista which create more opportunities of programs/services not loading in a timely fashion, or interplaying correctly. But the overall stability is good. I never get freezes/BSODs/or applications that don't launch with Vista. But my XP system was very stable too. So it is a wash between the 2 systems.

Downgrading does open up the possibility of driver and other problems that can be frustrating to solve. There are numerous threads from people who downgraded to XP and have had problems. I rarely see a lot of responses and solutions posted to those threads. You are kind of on your own when you do it yourself.

 

You could monitor what is accessing the drive - you sure it's not a third-party app?
On a laptop, I recommend turning off indexing, unless you rely on searching through your files a lot. Not many people do - it's fine on a desktop since you keep one on all the time and the drives are faster. Right-click on your C drive in Computer, uncheck.

And yes, big fan here. =D