Is it safe to replace Vista with XP?

Wife and I are buying a notebook for Christmas this year, and I'm wondering if:


A) We're going to have to get Vista with it.
B) If it's safe to format the thing and install XP Pro if we are stuck with Vista, or will we lose button functionality, Fn key stuff, etc...
C) If it turns out installing XP's a bad idea, if we get Vista Basic and then I install Vista Business (I've got a few keys for it), if that'd be safe.

Since this things going to have a lot more 'oomph' than my current desktop (PIV 2.4 @ 2.75, 1GB 333MHz RAM) I'm hoping to try Fallout 3, which won't run on my current rig. The plan is to get dedicated video for the laptop, but I want something with a bit less overhead if possible.


We're thinking of getting a Dell, at least so far.


Thanks!

 

Well, there are many guides to putting XP on Dell Computers here. Let me try to find the Dell Studio 15 and Dell XPS 1530 guides.


Studio Guide : http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=270228&page=4
Drivers are at the bottom of the page.

You will most likely need to purchase Vista with your new laptop, as it is now standard.
However, Vista works just fine, not glitchy at all, not laggy, not anything. I have never run into any compatibility issues with it, and I've used it for almost two years now. It runs just fine. Basically, it's XP with better looks. Some things you use might be in a different place, but I'd MUCH rather do this than go on a driver hunt just to install XP and have some components possibly not work. I really don't think it's worth it, I tried it myself before.

 

Yeah, I was surprised with Vista myself. I live in an apartment, and I found a Pentium 4 2.0GHz with a Gig of RAM that someone left outside our garbage room. I brought it upstairs, wiped the case with disinfectant (just in case *L*!) and rebuilt it. I threw Vista Business on it, just to get familiar with in case we get 'stuck' with it on the laptop, and it REALLY ran well. I disabled a few services, and when I threw an old 256 GeForce4 in it instead of the crappy 8MB of on board video RAM I was able run Aero and everything. I wouldn't have wanted to play a game on the thing (I don't think, but who knows?) but it ran WAY better than I thought it would have. Also solved my sound driver issues that XP had. I quit laughing at anti Vista jokes that day, I'll tell ya.

 

XP is perfectly safe to install if you ask me.
Fn button functionality isn't really that important (then again there's a possibility it could be lost).
You need to make sure though to have XP drivers for the hardware inside the laptop (such as gpu, Wifi, LAN, sound card, modem, chipset, touchpad).
You can download the drivers by using your pre-installed Vista, go to Device Manager and determine the names/numbers of relevant devices, then go to their manufacturers websites and download the XP drivers.

Also, before installing XP, you will have to make sure you have slipstreamed SATA drivers onto the install cd.

In my opinion, it would be best to slisptream the following:
Service Pack2, Service Pack 3 and SATA drivers onto the install cd.

 

Hmmm.. I dunno, I might just keep Vista, I'll see. I read what Mangos said, and I really don't wanna taint the shiny fun of a new (and our first) laptop hunting for drivers while I get 'told ya so' from the other half. Especially cause she'll have been right.. Yikes.



Another question, I build my own PCs, and one thing I LOVE is that I just get only what I need installed. No 'Free Trial' registry destruction, or anything like that. My non-nerd friends have laptops and they're suh-looooooow because they're clueless about maintaining them. I like a neat and tidy short list of startup/services/etc on my rigs.

I had a Dell XPS 450 back in '98 that I recall was pretty streamlined from the get go, is Dell still pretty good at only installing what you want?

Also, is the restore a DVD/CD? It's not on a partition is it? That was the story with the powerhouse PII450 I had 10 years ago. Heh, man times change. I still have the 12GB Hard Drive that came with that thing, but these days it's too small to back up anything on.

 

Personally, I think it's important for your software to compliment your hardware. XP is now almost 7 years old, it's time to move on. Vista is an excellent OS, despite all the bad press it has gotten from pre SP1 issues, OEMs pushing it on hardware that can't handle it or with bad drivers, and ignorant end-users. I think the best solution for you would be to buy your laptop, put Vista Business on it (a clean install to knock out all that garbageware that will come on it) and then install the drivers and software designed for it.
That said, even systems "unsupported" for XP, you can usually safely install it. Though you do sometimes lose function keys.

 

Yeah, that's probably what I'll do. I'll get Vista Basic to save money since that's that much more I can pt into memory or video, and stick Business on it when it arrives, if needed.

Is there a huge difference? I have my current 2 desktops subnetted along with my PSP on my home network, I should be able to do that regardless of what Vista is on there, right?

 

Correct. Basic is identical to Business except Business will add support for RDP and domains, and some other administrative options.
If you had to compare to XP...
XP Home = Vista Home Basic
XP Pro = Vista Business
XP MCE = Vista Ultimate
The other flavors of Vista are kind of new in betweens.

 

Thanks guys!This is a great forum for someone who's new to the game like myself!

 

Not, mind you, to dis _Vista, but were you still inclined to get a new system on which you could install XP without having "issues" like missing drivers, there are some systems you can still get that either do not come with a pre-installed OS, or else can still be had with XP pre-installed. For example, Sager notebooks, which are a smaller, non-national brand built on top of a so-called whitebook from a company named Clevo (which, to keep it short, is a so-called ODM - original design manufacturer - i.e., one of the companies that really builds all of the computers that are more popularly known as _Dells, _HPs, _Sonys, etc), can be purchased from many of the retailers who sell Sager systems without an OS, or with XP installed instead of _Vista. Two of the retailers who sell Sager notebooks who are better known in the Sager and Clevo forum on NBR are XoticPC and Powernotebooks and both sell Sager systems without an OS pre-installed.

One of the benefits of going in that direction is that you are almost certainly likely to have less trouble finding XP-based drivers for such a system than you would have trying to find XP-based drivers for systems that are sold with _VIsta only mandatorily pre-installed.

 

Dell has gotten pretty bad, although they are not the worst. I have done a clean install every time I set up a Dell machine because of the bloatware. Alienware is great...they only install the OS and whatever software comes with the optical drive for burning and playback.

 

Ahh, sorry for the delayed response guys, I didn't get any notifications about replies for some reason.


I think I'm comfy getting Vista, I had been trying to save a bit of OS overhead by getting Vista but I have to remember that my 'powerful' (circa 2003) main PC is only a PIV 2.4 with 1GB RAM. It's fast because I keep it tuned up myself by tweaking services, etc, that most people who know PCs know to do. This notebook we're getting is going to be dual core, with 3x the RAM, at a higher clock speed, faster FSB, etc etc etc.. So I am less concerned than I was about the OS. And the fact that chances are it's going to be designed with Vista in mind was also a great point for keeping Vista. Plus it looks like the Dells ship with Home Premium, which isn't at the low end of things.


KimoT, I'd love to do a clean install but I have Vista Business, not Home. When you say you were doing your own install, you mean you were installing an OEM disc, not a recovery disc (that would likely just put the crap back on anyway, right?), correct?




And one other thing, I think I'm being unrealistic about thinking I can add an ATi Mobility Radeon HD 3450 card for 100 bucks and play any newer games, correct? So if I'm not planning on playing things like Fallout3, as much as I'd like to try it finally, is it worth getting a video card in the thing? I would think it'd be better regardless, just to free up some RAM and offload some regular computing from the processor, but I dunno. Really, I was sorta hoping I could mess around with Fallout 3 or COD: World at War for a bit now before I FINALLY build a new desktop in the spring. It's been so long since I had a current PC!

Would I be better off upgrading the processor? For another 80 dollars we can go from an Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 (2.0GHz/667Mhz FSB/1MB cache) to a Core 2 Duo T5800 (2.00GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)... Doubling the cache and speeding up the FSB seems wotth 80 buck to me, plus it's a Pentium chip, not a C2D, so is that a good idea or will it only make a small difference compared to adding video card?


Also, since I have access to 64 and 32 bit OSs for free, would you expect Vista 64 to run any faster/slower/different than 32 bit?

 

It depends on the OEM as to whether installing it yourself from their CD will put all the bloatware back on. With HP in mid-2003, it did put the bloatware back on. With Dell in 2005 and mid-2007, it did not. That's all I have experience with. I would suspect Dell still does not include bloatware on their reinstall CD's.

It depends somewhat on what the integrated GPU is, but I'd say generally the Mobility Radeon 3450 for $100 would be better than that CPU upgrade for $80. The CPU increase in performance would be fairly small even with the doubling of the cache, and the slower one wouldn't bottleneck most games - an integrated GPU would. The only corollary if is the integrated GPU is the Mobility Radeon HD 3200 - that one is pretty good and if that's the one, the $100 upgrade probably isn't worth it. If it's the Intel X4500 or X3100, or nVIDIA, it's certainly a worthwhile upgrade if you want to play some games.

The Pentium Dual Core vs. Core 2 Duo actually doesn't mean anything other than the cache and FSB. They're both based on the Core architecture, as are recent Celerons. If it were a Pentium 4 Mobile or Pentium M (or a Pentium 4 desktop in a laptop ) then it would make a considerable difference.

Vista x64 will have a slightly higher chance of compatibility problems, and won't run 16-bit applications. It will run 64-bit applications, which x32 won't. Generally, a 64-bit program will run faster than the same 32-bit program. But almost all programs today are 32-bit, and those will run very near the same speed.

 

Thanks Apollo13, that answers pretty much everything. The integrated chip's an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, so it's probably something we'll upgrade.