Is There Trouble In Vista Land? XP to the Rescue?

Well, it seems OEMs are bowing to consumer demands, and thus putting the pressure on Microsoft to allow “downgrading” to XP, according to these reports from CNet and Engadget. Quite an interesting development in the Vista space for sure. However, I think this is a wise move on Microsoft’s part – better to lose them to XP than to say – Mac OS X. Just yesterday, I was fighting with some shutdown / standby issues on my 2710p that seems to be a Vista issue, and I was thinking about how frustrating it was to constantly have to force a power-off / power-on just to recover from it. My MacBook was dutifully sitting by watching it all unfold, sweetly calling out my name.

I just received an invitation to beta test SP 1 of Vista, so I’ll definitely be looking for fixes that are causing me problems, like stand-by, shutting down, screen issues, etc. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to report any of my findings until it is officially released, but there is hope.

I’m curious – anyone gonna take their OEM up on the offer to downgrade from Vista to XP? If so, why?