I've now got two laptops from the factory running Vista as the OS. I have to say I haven't noticed any great advantage with Vista. I have noticed several disadvantages: first, it takes forever to boot and load apps. Second, my older version of LabVIEW doesn't support 64 bit drivers and when I tried to load the developer tools on the one PC I crashed the machine drivers completely and had to burn the HDD back to factory setpoints. So I think the backwards compatibility of Vista is lacking as well.
Finally, Vista is a memory hog. I've got 4GB of memory on the one PC and it's 1/3 loaded just getting the machine booted. Which is probably why it takes so long to boot....
I called tech support and was told that the manufacturer does not recommend regressing to XP. My coworkers and I think this is "bad advice."
I would like to get some other opinions before I try this process. Thoughts? Has anybody taken a Vista machine and regressed to XP?