Being forced to use vista??

[nihil]

Yes,

Another point is that the OEMs have declared at least some machines to be Vista only, and that if you install XP you will void your warranty and support.

Possibly not such a big deal for corporate shops, but certainly worth thinking about for a private user.

This is the kind of thing I am thinking of:

Yup...I am another not so happy laptop buyers.....I bought an Everex with core duo.....1 gig memory.....I spent 600 bucks...Seemed like it would be a good setup......
Vista had me going freaking nuts within 2 hours of setting up.....I got pissed and formatted to XP...at this point I went to grab drivers from the site and found that there were none. Just vista crap......well being home edition 32 bit....should work fine with those drivers I thought......WOW...wrong answer......
So I phoned support only to find out that I voided my warranty.......I told the guy he was crazy....How the heck does that void warrenty...He claimed because I changed operating systems......I hung up on him......OK...So I look back less than a week later to the support site at Everex.....I figured I would find another unit with same specs and try those drivers......I then realized that they have posted the drivers for XP with my laptop......However ...here is the deal.....
Everything is fine...except the Video.....Text is fine....But pictures are so badly textured...I cant take it......
Is there anyway Ive ruined the on board Video?.....It is VIA® Chrome9™ HC IGP (64MB shared memory, 128MB maximum) with DirectX 9.0 Support .....
Other than the pictures being so pixelated they are unviewable....the notebook is fine.....
If I can just work this part out.....I would be a happy camper......any suggestions would be appreciated