I got a new laptop with Vista installed already when Vista was brandnew and still a lot of hassle. I had noticed that XP was getting slower and slower on my old pc and was told by a guy that is in the programming business, that Microsoft tends to hide bugs in their updates that slow your pc to a crawl over the 6 months prior to the release of a new operating system. Also, I do not like Microsoft or anyone having the right to have a lot of personal data about me, enter my computer at will, copy things out of there I cannot see and send them somewhere else, which all happens when you start updating, they will only allow you to update after you allow them to install some stuff Genuine Advantage that will force you from then on to allow this sneaking around on your pc. So I installed XP instead of Vista, had it ratified by phone, and now enjoy using XP at incredible speed and staying that way on a laptop that had enough memory built in to accommodate Vista, which eats up at least three times the memory of XP.