Apart from a few select models on Dell's website, is there any other companies around that have the option to get XP instead of vista on a new laptop?

If you want to downgrade from Vista I think the license cost is around $100, thats a microsoft policy apparently.

and I think they stop selling XP OEM in....6 days?

computer alliance has a few asus ones listed on their site with XP as an option.

You can downgrade anything that comes with Fista business as well.

Vista Business or Ultimate is legally downgradeable.

Yeah vista business and ultimate are downgradable, but you have to call microsoft to get a legit key and also find out if the model actualy has xp drivers, alot of the time they dont. Most things will work but youll find a few things that dont.

Any reason in particular why you want to use XP over Vista? Since SP1, XP no longer has the performance edge in games, and I seriously doubt you'll run into any driver issues.

Since SP1, XP no longer has the performance edge in games

I am posting this from vista ... and I would question that comment. For me, vSP1 runs better then Vista Retail and maybe even xpSP2, but for me xpSP3 runs better vSP1. And even if it runs "as well as" you'd be hard pressed to justify upgrading to it.

Vista still has probably the most annoying default installs of any OS.

The only reason I am on Vista is because I wanted a dx10 client for Age of Conan... which isn't actually released yet

Any reason in particular why you want to use XP over Vista?

More reasons than using Vista over XP, that's for sure.

Such as, parabol?

Such as, parabol?

Sorry mate, Vista users are the ones on the defence and trying to convince everyone to upgrade. It's up to them to present the arguments as to why the rest of us should give up the status quo (XP) and use Vista, when everyone's applications are running fine in XP.

So far I haven't come across much other than:

1. "Vista is new and modern, get with the times"
2. "It looks great"
3. "You must be running dinosaur hardware to not like it".

None of these are convincing in any way whatsoever ... *yawn*

Yep, didn't think you actually had any reasons, thanks.

Yep, didn't think you actually had any reasons, thanks.

Nice try at baiting and shifting the burden of proof. Too bad it didn't work.

Still awaiting valid reasons to give up the status quo and migrate away from XP. Been waiting since the release of Vista actually, still nothing. Unless you have something to add? Thought not.

vista was released prematurely, it was buggy when released and it is still buggy to this day
it is not an operating system I as an administrator would feel comfortable releasing to a large desktop environment
there are driver support + performance issues, not to mention the hardware requirements and HUGE space requirements for an operating system

windows xp is tried and true, its not perfect but its a damn shot better than vista is right now

Parabol, I was simply asking a legitimate question, I'm not trying to convince anyone to upgrade. It sounds like it's more of a pain in the arse to find a laptop with XP now than it is with Vista, so I was simply asking if there was a reason to go through the effort of finding one or paying extra to downgrade. So, I was asking if there's a particular reason why WetWired wanted XP over Vista. No need for anyone here to get all pissy, it's just an OS ffs.

Shifting nothing:

More reasons than using Vista over XP, that's for sure.

You claimed matter-of-factly that there were more reasons to use XP over Vista and I was fascinated to hear them. Then when I inquired as to what they were, instead of actually providing a single one, you start demanding that I provide arguments for switching to Vista.

I don't care whether you think it's not worth spending the money or effort to get Vista or not, that's everyone's personal decision and it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I also don't care if you think you are the status quo, everything is heading towards Vista regardless of this, Microsoft will make sure of it.

This thread seemed to me to be about severely limiting someone's choices with regards to hardware, in order to get something with an OS that is only being sold for a short time longer, and to me that was just confounding.

last edited by kos at 22:51:48 25/May/08

I also don't care if you think you are the status quo, everything is heading towards Vista regardless of this

While I naturally would have thought a move to Vista was inevitable, given enough time ... there's meant to be another version of Windows OS when? 2009/10? So one could almost skip Vista completely if this occurred. Though given Microsoft's track record for deadlines, I'd expect that not to occur anytime soon. So now it's just a matter of when people will switch to Vista permanently, I agree.

For the majority of us, there's no reason to yet. It would actually be easier to just stick to what works, even if there's a little overhead in getting XP on a Vista pre-installed machine. After opening my brand new laptop last year and toying with Vista for a few hours, I formatted and put XP on. All my problems are gone. I don't have to look for bug fixes, don't need to wait for service packs, don't need to keep looking up HOWTOs to overcome a limitation .. since I already went through all of that when XP came out and I know it by heart.

It's like if Macgyver upgraded his swiss army knife to a newer, shinier one that didn't really improve his productivity or contraption-making abilities :)

I want XP for one because ram is a lot more expensive in laptops than desktops and I'd have to have at least 2Gb on a laptop to be worthwhile, whereas 2Gb is plenty for XP.

Secondly I know it works, all my current applications (and codecs etc) that I like using will move across fine without any issues, photoshop itself is a resource hog so i can't imagine it being any better with vista.

I don't actually own a laptop at the moment, but my wife and I are going on a 2 month holiday (uk/germany/africa) in august and rather than fork out $700 for some dodgy media storage device we figured it's better to pay a bit extra and get a laptop that we can copy our photos to, upload to the net if need be, watch movies/shows, play some older games or listen to music in transit. All that and when we get back we'll have a laptop that we can actually make use of (compared to a media device)

That said, I don't want to be f***ing with a new OS while overseas. I want to set it up like I like it and have it ready to go while overseas. I won't have access to the net very often to download any drivers or codecs I need, basically I need the reliability of XP.

Sorry mate, Vista users are the ones on the defence and trying to convince everyone to upgrade. It's up to them to present the arguments as to why the rest of us should give up the status quo (XP) and use Vista, when everyone's applications are running fine in XP.

I didn't note anyone in the thread advocating XP users upgrade to Vista. There are still a very good reasons not to upgrade existing systems to Vista at the moment depending on the machine in question.

But this isn't a 'should I upgrade to Vista' question. The poster is asking how to downgrade a new machine to XP. For a new computer where driver support is much better and you are less likely to encounter legacy hardware problems this makes much less sense..

Most of us Vista users are convincing anyone to upgrade. We're trying to find out why people still want to run off and spend more money and effort to downgrade to XP because they prematurely think that Vista still sucks. Oooh vista this vista that, before I even try it Ill curse it and delete it from my new laptop that is perfectly capable of running it with no hitches.

Vista is quite an alright OS nowadays. 2Gb is enough and I ran games fine with it (I upped to 4gb). Crysis ran very nicely with 2Gb.

quite an alright OS hey

you're not convincing anyone

quite an alright OS hey

Its a bloody OS pave, its not gonna make anyone wet.

2Gb is enough and I ran games fine with it (I upped to 4gb). Crysis ran very nicely with 2Gb.

So why did you need to upgrade to 4gig then? Unless you weren't happy with the performance of 2gig right?

Well, I have 2GB of RAM (not even DDR2) in a system that's over 2 years old now. I've been running Vista Ultimate x64 for yonks, and I haven't had any problems. I've got more than enough RAM for Photoshop, Maya, games, etc. So I really don't think you'll be f***ing around with anything while you're overseas, particularly if you're just doing stuff with photos. If you can't find a laptop you want with XP, I really don't think you're going to have any issues with Vista.

yeah well so is your face

:(

heh..

i am handing a tosh x205 laptop to my other half, but she needs xp to run the queensland health programs for work.

vista does not support the programs and they don't work on vista..

dual boot it is, vista on one hard drive, xp on the other..

haven't got around to load xp as yet, with a bit of luck it will be painless, but i think not..

There is no reason I can see to upgrade to vista if you already have a machine running xp and it runs fine, expecially a laptop, unless its fairly new hardware with plenty of ram and you somehow got a free upgrade.

Also there is no reason to downgrade a new machine that has vista, it works fine,Unless you have specific business apps that you know dont work on vista.

So why did you need to upgrade to 4gig then? Unless you weren't happy with the performance of 2gig right?

Cause I wanted to future proof it and also games like Crysis benefit when on absolute max with 4 gb.

I want XP for one because ram is a lot more expensive in laptops than desktops and I'd have to have at least 2Gb on a laptop to be worthwhile, whereas 2Gb is plenty for XP.

I guess we buy our RAM at different places.

On the price lists I routinely check, a 2GB DDR2 module is exactly the same price for laptops as for desktops - $47.
Only difference is the laptop memory is DDR2-667 and the desktop is DDR2-800.

Both are perfectly suitable for all machines currently on the market.

That said, Vista makes my skin crawl. I installed it on my primary machine and forced myself to try to get used to it, then ran screaming back to XP about a week later shortly after I discovered that there's no NVIDIA span mode in Vista (according to NVIDIA it's impossible given Vista's driver architecture).
I'm sure it is technically possible, but if it's more effort than a company is willing to put in, then that's academic.
Windows 2000 needed driver trickery in order to use a single video card to run two screens independently. Vista is the opposite.

I won't bother to list the multitude of reasons I prefer XP, but I will say that I currently have a triple screen system where the first two screens are connected to a GeForce 7950GT and the third screen is connected to a PCI Matrox Millennium.
Vista does not allow this; it requires ALL display adaptors in a multimonitor system to use the same driver, so not only couldn't I use my Millennium, I couldn't even use my PCI Express Radeon X1300.
It'd be even worse on a modern motherboard with built-in PCI Express graphics - if you wanted to use the built-in graphics and a powerful 3D card simultaneously you'd be forced to use the same brand as was on your motherboard (be it ATI or NVIDIA).
If you had Intel, VIA or S3 onboard... sucks to be you!

I installed it on my primary machine and forced myself to try to get used to it, then ran screaming back to XP about a week later shortly after I discovered that there's no NVIDIA span mode in Vista (according to NVIDIA it's impossible given Vista's driver architecture).
I'm sure it is technically possible, but if it's more effort than a company is willing to put in, then that's academic.
Windows 2000 needed driver trickery in order to use a single video card to run two screens independently. Vista is the opposite.

Sorry, span mode? Do you mean different s*** on two monitors from the one card? I've been doing that (and clone mode) with a NVidia card since I got my laptop back in Feb.. or do you mean something else?

Yeah, I don't quite follow either, because I've had dual-monitors up and running on my Vista machine since the day I installed it, nVidia card and all.

Span mode is where the system treats both screens as one double-wide (horizontal span) or double-high (vertical span) screen. Since most games do not support multimonitor, span mode is the only way to play them across more than one screen since they see the display as, for example, one 3840x1200 screen rather than a pair of 1920x1200 screens.
Treating the displays as separate devices is, in NVIDIA terminology, called DualView.
NVIDIA drivers have included span mode for many years; ATI drivers have never had it.

Of course, the usefulness of dual-screen gaming is debatable since you wind up with the monitor bezels in the centre of your view - not exactly ideal for most types of games, i.e. FPS, racing, etc. Triple-screen span would be a perfect application for a pair of video cards (you have the necessary number of display connectors and you have twice the horsepower to push all those pixels), but for some reason NVIDIA keeps just pushing two-cards-one-screen, which is, in my opinion, of use to a similarly small number of people.

Dual-screen span mode would also be viable if you were to remove the bezels from your screens, or purchase one of the horrendously expensive double screens available (you can buy displays made from as many as five individual LCD panels all mounted in one ultrawide frame).

And finally, yes, you can of course "just get a bigger monitor!" as people always like to bleat when the subject of multiple monitors comes up. However a single large monitor does not give the wraparound effect of multiple screens. Also, the extra-wide aspect ratio of multimonitor works better for 'looking around' in FPS and RPG games, and also for peripheral vision in racing games and flight sims.
Plus, you can get 24" screens for $500 new. A single 30" will cost between $1600 and $2400.

Back in 2000 I used to play Civilization II spread over five 800x600 screens. Man that was awesome :D

FINE, THERE'S NO NEED TO YELL!

there's no NVIDIA span mode in Vista (according to NVIDIA it's impossible given Vista's driver architecture).

I was under the impression that they didn't implement it because Vista's display architecture does it itself.

When I plug my laptop into an external monitor I get the option to clone, span, or just use one of the displays, and can then adjust that and the position of the displays in Display Settings. All this is taken care of by Vista itself, regardless of video drivers you're using.

From my simple setup's point of view it seems a much more elegant and user-friendly solution, but I can see how people who wish to have more complicated setups would be crippled by the fact that Microsoft obviously does not allow the video card manufacturer to easily provide their own solution or enhancements.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken..?

last edited by kos at 19:55:59 26/May/08

As I tried to explain above, what you're talking about is not span mode. It's DualView (in NVIDIA terminology).

Span mode is where both screens together behave as a SINGLE DISPLAY. Your taskbar stretches across both screens, maximized and fullscreen programs stretch across both screen, both screens are set to exactly the same resolution, colour depth, refresh rate, etc, because they're behaving as two halves of one display.

DualView is the usual way dual screens are done under XP, and the only way dual screens CAN be done under Vista. Officially anyway.

Here are some screenshots to show what I mean.
1) my desktop in DualView
2) my desktop in span mode
3) An old shot of me playing Unreal Tournament in span mode

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r256/some_unused_name/DualView.jpg
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r256/some_unused_name/Spanmode.jpg
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r256/some_unused_name/UltrawidescreenUTShot0002.jpg

Ah, OK no need for the screenshots, it's clear now.
Seems silly that it can't be done, anyone know if it's possible in Linux or OS X?

Also, that ultra widescreen seems unnecessary, especially for FPSes. I could only see the multi-monitor setup really benefiting flightsims, but anything wider than single 16:10 for anything else seems like it would feel too letterboxy to me.

Linux - don't know but I assume so. In fact I think I've seen some massive Quake 3 setups running over multiple screens under Linux.
OS X - not unless the video driver does it, and I don't know if it's possible. It certainly isn't there by default.

There are actually a few products around which attempt to bring triplehead gaming to life, most notably Matrox's TripleHead2Go.
Unfortunately it's absurdly expensive and even more absurdly limited in resolutions, interface, etc.

There's also a free program called SoftTH (Software TripleHead) which brings some triplehead support to various DirectX 9 games.
Unfortunately it's pretty slow and has many issues, as you might expect.
The program and lots of neat screenshots here: http://www.kegetys.net/SoftTH/


Regarding the usefulness of wider-than-16:10, it depends on the game and the gamer. Obviously it doesn't help you to shoot something that's in front of your face in a FPS, but it could alert you to a monster approaching from the side.
In FPSes and racing games it would be mostly for peripheral vision, not for staring at all the time.

In RTSes or similar you might be better off with a single large screen.

There's also the possibility of pivoting your screens 90 degrees and then spanning across them so the viewing area isn't so elongated (not implemented under Windows to my knowledge).
Imagine three 24" screens in portrait orientation with ultra-thin bezels.

Also, check this out: http://www.truveo.com/GTR2-on-3-24-Monitors/id/1487126817