Admittedly my one experience with Vista was a terrible ordeal and I’m still not sure whether it was the OS or the hardware, but I haven’t touched a Vista machine since then so my opinion is slightly flawed. I never had any issues with XP other than the usual and I’d gladly pick up another XP machine, but I’ve been under the impression that the downgrade has only been available to OEMs. Well, CNET Asia made a few phone calls and it turns out that everyone is privy to the downgrade. Awesome. You simply need to call customer support and give them your Vista serial number and in return you’ll be given an activation code for Windows XP Pro, x64 or the tablet PC edition. Just make sure you have a copy lying around somewhere.
Downgrade your Vista to XP [Crave Asia]