new dell

[bailey]

a friend wants to buy a new dell inspron 1525 laptop, it comes with vesta installed and he does not want vesta.

if there any reason why the hard drive can't be formated and a new oem xp home installed ?

he is willing to buy the oem xp home from newegg to do this.

thanks

bob

[glc]

Tell him to go back to the Dell site and customize it - the 1525 is available with a XP downgrade. I would not recommend buying it with Vista and trying the downgrade yourself.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...s~inspnnb_1525

Click on "operating system".

[bailey]

right, and they want a extra $150.00 to do that. and the oem is only $89.

[glc]

For $150 you get XP Pro and a Vista Business upgrade. If you do it yourself, you won't get any support from Dell and you are going to have to play with partitions and chase drivers.

If you go to the small business site, you can do the same thing with a Vostro.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by glc For $150 you get XP Pro and a Vista Business upgrade. If you do it yourself, you won't get any support from Dell and you are going to have to play with partitions and chase drivers. If you go to the small business site, you can do the same thing with a Vostro.

yep, been there and tied that, but they don't accept the dell prefered customer account card there, they want you to apply for a busness account there.

probly best to just forget it and see if he will get along ok with vesta, for the things he does, he probly won't even notice any differance.

[kilgoretrout]

If he can put off his purchase till this summer, the Windows 7 release will be just around the corner. As usual, MS will offer free upgrades to the newer OS if you buy the older OS within 6 or 7 months before the release of the newer OS. He may be better off waiting a few months if he can qualify for a Win7 free upgrade.

[bailey]

well, its not a problem any more, she likes Vista and is happy with it.

needless to say, this was my first experience with Vista home premum, and was very impressed with the way it performed, but disippointed that it did not have any drivers for her printer, so compataiability issues are still a big problem with it, and I would never buy it myself.