NOT a pain to find drivers. Just download them from Dell website and save to flash drive before beginning reinstall of OS.
people say Vista is slower than XP, does anyone know what the benchmark tests say about how much slower?
i have both vista and xp machines. i see 0 difference. the only real problem with vista is incompatibility with some older hardware.
like i said, it depends on the model. go to dell support. A lot of their new desktops and laptops do NOT have xp drivers available. And if your new studio just happens to have the exact same hardware as an inspiron, then you're in luck. but to me, looking up product numbers et al for all the generic POS hardware they put in there is a pain in the ass. Even if they are available, half the time they wont even install. They error out telling you your current hardware configuration does not match the drivers or the drivers cant find the necessary hardware or BSODs gallore and yep, you can try changing every setting in the bios and then try force installing them and still no dice. Like i said twice now, some models are picky, some aren't. but hey, what do I know right?
I think you're on the right track... "but what do you know..." It's not a matter of being "picky" at all. If there are no XP drivers on Dell's website for a particular model, that means those models never intended to offer XP as an option, therefore Dell didn't produce the drivers for them. On those models, nobody should expect nor even hope to run XP as there will never be mobo driver for chipset, NIC, audio, video. You can't necessarily run XP on a computer "just because you want to".
if someone buys a Dell Inspiron laptop from the dell.com website with the XP downgrade option, will this avoid all the drivers issues you guys are talking about? also, does anyone know of any coupon codes to use?
me: Depending on the model, drivers are a problem. gnome: no, you're wrong drivers are not a problem. me: Yes, depending on the model, drivers ARE a problem. gnome: no, you're wrong again. depending on the model, drivers are perfectly fine. LOL!
That's right, drivers are not the problem. Before you attempt to install XP on certain Dell models, you should already know that it's not possible.... and if you have your thinking cap on, you won't even try.
All else being equal, what would show better performance for a graphics-intensive computer game: a laptop running XP or laptop running Vista?