I followed up on this statement. I contacted both students. One of the two, who I believe purchased a Lenovo, had considered a downgrade but found he got acceptable performance after removing everthing from the Startup folder (or Vista equivalent).
So only one actually downgraded. I am pasting my inquiry and his response verbatim. The conclusion seems to be that if your license is at a high enough level to give you downgrade privileges, it doesn't matter how you obtain your copy of the product (which may answer Betty's question depending on the level of her Vista license): ***quote: It didn't cost me anything - I didn't have a XP Pro CD so what I had to do was slipstream a copy of windows xp from another computer and install it from that. That part was really frustrating, but with an XP Pro disk it'd be really easy. Activation was simple though, I just called up the number Microsoft gives and gave them my Vista product id. You should check for what downgrade rights your system has first, though. I had business which can be downgraded to Pro. -Chris On 8/8/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: How did you do it? Did it cost extra? Thanks! --John Emmerling ***end quote: Too bad. I have an XP Pro CD I could have lent him =). > Did they purchase XP, or did the laptop mfg do a free downgrade? > > > > > This empirical evidence may contribute to the discussion: > > > > My son is starting freshman year at college. Two of his friends > > ordered new laptops through their Universities, which were delivered > > with Vista. Both students are Comp. Sci./Engineering majors. Both > > have since gotten downgrades. > > On 5/25/07, b_s-wilk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <etc.> ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************