I've written about this before... OEMs, shipping their crapware on machines cause the end-user/consumer experience of Vista to suck.  http://justinho.com/blog/junk-in-the-preload/  

Today, I read that "...Dell Computer, Hewlett Packard, and Sony on Wednesday all confirmed plans to exercise the downgrade rights Microsoft offers with OEM versions of Windows Vista Business and Vista Ultimate in order to continue offering XP-equipped PCs to their customers..."

Why do people not read this like, "These OEMs suck," but rather "Vista sucks"?

Yeah, to me, these are the ones that can't ship decent drivers or add-on utilities that actually WORK on their machines.  Did anyone at Sony and HP ever actually TEST their consumer images of machines they're selling? http://justinho.com/blog/vista-takes-forever-to-startup/

Why on earth would you downgrade to XP?  RAM is $18/GB right now.  You can get a 2GB SODIMM for a laptop for CAD$39 after tax, to your door.  Get over it, people.

The people who are resistant to change are the ones that are missing out.  My T60p laptop is running Vista x64 (the 64-bit edition of supposedly the worst operating-system-to-get-drivers-for) and I have yet to encounter a driver problem.  I simply don't have a device that doesn't work.  I'm addicted to the UI enhancements, especially on large/high resolution display panels, and I'm addicted to the Offline Files.  My computer doesn't take 5 minutes to start up, copying files over the network doesn't take forever, and my computer even goes to sleep when I close the lid, and successfully resumes from sleep when I open it!  I get my work done faster, and I'm happier while I'm doing it because my computer responds better and makes my job easier.  I like Vista.