Vista downgrade ablility

Hi there, I'm buying a laptop for the university I'm going to. I was going to get vista, but there have been some issues with it at the uni. I was thinking that I would still go with vista and downgrade to XP if I needed to, but I noticed a couple of things when building my laptop on the dell website.

Some of the components say "for vista" which scares me a little. Does that mean if they are in my laptop I won't be able to go back to xp? Here are the components:
8X DVD+/-RW w/ Roxio Creator Dell Edition Digital Media for Vista Ultimate
Dell Wireless® 360 Bluetooth Module for Vista

On the dell website if I try to choose XP with these components it will say:
"Compatibility Instructions - 2
Errors:
You must select an Optical Drive that matches the version of Windows� Vista Operating System that you are purchasing. To fix this issue please click on the highlighted words to be directed to the appropriate section to modify your selections.
Your Bluetooth Option selection requires a Windows� Vista Operating System. To fix this issue please click on the highlighted words to be directed to the appropriate section to modify your selections."

So if I get this setup I will only ever be able to run vista?

Thanks in advance!

 

I have no clue why they do that...the DVD drives are identical.

You should have no problem moving down to XP.

 

Maybe its the software (roxio creator) thats for vista only?

What about the bluetooth? I was definitely planning on using it a lot.

 

I agree there should be no problem. Check Dell's website again; I know they were having issues with the Bluetooth options a day or two ago.

Just curious; what country Dell site and what model are you looking at? I can't reproduce the errors on the U.S. site and couldn't on the UK site either.

If you want to get it with XP, you might want to order by phone to avoid these "compatibility errors". As to the Vista issues, do you know they've actually had problems? I know my university is advising caution with Vista (and sticking with XP on uni. machines), but I haven't heard of any documented problems.

 

I was looking at the Latitude D830 on the US website.

I don't really want XP, I would like to have Vista, but since I've heard there are issues I would like the option to downgrade (only until the issues get fixed) just in case.

Thanks for your replies. I don't see how hardware could be for only Vista so I'm just going to go with Vista Ultimate.