Quote: "I thought that if you put XP on a computer designed for Vista, XP wouldn't work as well as it perhaps could - I've had a few people tell me (none here) that the hardware is designed specifically for a particular OS."
I'm no expert but I wouldnt have thought this was the case. At risk of being facetious, I would argue that whatever decrease in performance you get from installing XP on a system designed for Vista, you might more than make up for by having XP as the OS instead of Vista.
Also, when I rang Dell to put together a system for me based on XP, never did it come up in the conversation that using this piece of hardware was better suited to Vista. And it certainly didnt appear to be down to a lack of knowledge. They understood precisely at the outset why I wanted XP and displayed a strong knowledge of the various hardware possibilities. Needless to say I've very pleased with both the laptop and desktop systems they built for me.
However, like Robert, I am not best pleased with the dud Windows 2007 they sold me. I use excel to death at work (and know it virtually inside and out) and having stupidly thought that XL 2007 would be a better version of 97, I didnt bat an eyelid when they offered it to me. Oh how regrettable that decision has turned out to be.
Microsoft, really, what were you thinking????
