Going from Vista to XP

Question

I've had my N100 notebook since Vista came out. My version is the premium version and from my understanding, 1 gig of ram was sufficient.  However, I have soon found out that Vista is a terrible resource hog. My laptop takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes to start up. I e-mailed technical support (I cant even find their e-mail address anymore) and they gave me some hints on how to speed it up. It basically did nothing. Now my question is, is there a way that Lenovo can send me an XP disc? Im extremely dissatisfied with this OS. Have you guys experienced this?

Answer 1

I use a Lenovo 3000 V100 (T5200 1.6GHz) that came with Vista preinstalled.  Despite adding 1GB RAM to max it out at 2GB, Vista performance was what I consider very poor.  Having heard about the lack of enthusiasm in the business community to move to Vista and that manufacturers are increasingly providing the option of using XP instead of Vista, I contacted Lenovo support to find out what, if any, options I had.
To cut a long story short, Lenovo was willing to sell me XP restore CDs for the V100.  In past months, this might not have been the case as they were under pressure from Microsoft to push Vista.  The cost was $59 which I considered acceptable given that the restore set includes an XP Pro license.  My CDs arrived and having backed up the laptop, I "restored" it to XP.  I have been extremely pleased with its performance and reliability since then.  I would not go back to Vista on the machine.  I believe that the additional $59 was well spent.  One can argue that Lenovo should have provided the XP CDs free and the company may do that with new sales since the marketplace has changed its perception of Vista sufficiently to affect manufacturers' product offerings.  However, at the time I bought my laptop (July 2007), Vista was all the rage and I purchased it with full knowledge of what I was buying.  The choice to downgrade to XP was mine and I felt the cost was reasonable.
My only negative experience with the "downgrade" is that the Softex security software provided is an earlier version (4.00.26) and isn't quite as reliable.  However, the lack of reliability of the Softex cut-down software shipped as part of the system software has been documented elsewhere in this forum.  For me, it's only an inconvenience.  The solution is to purchase the full product.  I just haven't taken the plunge yet.
I'd call the Lenovo Support Line and talk to them to see what they would be willing to do.  The worst that could happen is that they say "no" and you are no worse off but I think you'll find that they'll give you options.
My experience is, of course, mine alone and may not be representative of what you find on you N100.
Just my $0.02
Edit: 19 Jun 2008
Check out this link: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=VSTA-DWNGRD
Although the information specifies Vista Business or Ultimate as the only supported downgradable OSs, my V100 came with Vista Home and they still sold me the XP Recovery CD set.
Message Edited by jlac839 on 06-19-2008 03:39 AM