Up(down)grading from Vista to XP

If you are currently thinking of buying a new PC, you have until June 30 (or earlier). Dell is saying that June 18 is the cutoff date. However, if you have a business account, you may be able to get it somewhat later – but don’t count on it.

Also, if you buy from a “white box” maker, they should be able to install XP up until the end of the year.

However, if you buy Vista Business or Vista Ultimate  (or you have an enterprise site license) you can get a “downgrade disk” that lets you install XP. Dell, ever sensitive to market demands, has announced that it will pre-install the “downgrade disk” at no additional charge (or a slight charge on some PCs), thus giving you Windows XP. Dell says it will support this as long as Microsoft supports the “downgrade” policy.

If you made the mistake of buying Vista, you can do the downgrade yourself, although it takes some work.  Here’s how:

Why bother?  Essentially two reasons. First, it will cost you more money to buy a Vista machine that runs acceptable than an XP machine - you need more memory (4GB), a more expensive graphics card, etc.  Secondly, especially for law firms, some of the legal-specific programs may not run, or not run acceptably under Vista.  Apparently AutoCAD is an extreme example: the current version will not run under Vista. An upgraded version will - but that’s around $10,000 a pop. A good reason to stick with XP.