A bit to add in here. I know at least with dell you can still get OEM XP. Just a thought for those stuck on not upgrading to Vista. I might just have to give in though

there are still a few laptops that have XP on them, at least on Newegg I saw a few Acers. Plus, if you do have a copy of XP you can reformat a new system and get rid of Vista altogether (although, I am SO not that brave!!).

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The Acer I purchased comes loaded with XP Pro.

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lucky.. although.. Vista in general isn't all that bad. Most of the driver problems have been worked out by the 3rd party.. with the next SR, it should be just fine to use.

Yeah I figure if I'm buying a new laptop with Vista preinstalled everything should be all updated and happy (*crosses fingers*) In the past I've custom built all the desktops and tend to come up with little problems all over the place.

Like Pesto said, Vista isn't all bad. We had a driver Vista issue. We bought two Gateway machines, 1 laptop and 1 desktop with Vista earlier in the year. We originally had problems with the "sleep mode" on the desktop. We had several conversation with Gateway about it. Eventually they realized they had an issue. Of all things it was an audio driver that was causing it. Strange. The tech that developed the patch and had been betta testing the fix called us, emailed us the driver and gave us his personal phone number. The betta fix worked. A few weeks later the new driver was released but we didn't need it of course. After we got past tech support and was working with the engineer, it was wonderful. So life with Vista has been fine, I wouldn't be afraid of it. (run photoshop CS 3 on both of them) We've been running Gateways since 1994 (desktop and laptop Radio Shack DOS machines before that) and have been happy with them. (the state of Iowa had a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, so going down memory lane looking at my paperwork on computers for the rebate). Have fun!

I've had a love / hate relationship with Gateway since they first became a company - I was one of the first buyers from them and over the years have purchased for myself of family at least 4 machines.... but they started to go down hill when Dell took off and Gateway just couldn't catch-em.. then they started opening their own ill-fated stores all over the country instead of working with a place like Best Buy... another mistake.

It was around this time that I started to build my own machines and haven't looked back since. Hopefully, they've turned themselves around a lot but I encourage anyone with the interest to look into building their own - it allows you to gather the best parts for each component rather than relying on whatever stuff the large companies buy in bulk.

Hey Pesto, have you heard that Acer has purchased Gateway.

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