Replace Vista Home with XP Pro or Linux? Options

[Guineu]

Hi,

A friend and I both bought Dell Inspiron 1501 Laptops a couple years ago. His is always plagued with Malware,
which I always get to remove! Atribune has been a great help for that, but for me, things go much smoother
here with XP. My desktops are running XP Home, and I like it much better. I have an unregistered copy of
Student Media XP Pro w/SP2 from June 2006. I can't Upgrade either of my XP Home desktops with it as it's date
is older than the Home versions, and I can't/won't wipe them clean. How about the idea of burning clean the HD of
my VISTA Laptop and installing this old XP Pro? I'm assuming Microsoft will have and let me install the couple
hundred (I predict) Updates that will probably be necessary to bring it up to date. With yet another Windows to
supercede Vista coming out, does this make any sense at all?

Perhaps I should consider Linux instead! rolleyes.gif

Does this particular machine present technical problems that will make me regret abandoning Vista?

Any thoughts on this?

--Guineu

p.s. I'm not interested in Dual Boots