King Dave is in da house…
By the way, Dave seems to be eating up the competition alive down here when it comes to getting really great deals on new/used laptops and desktops. I’m sure his hardware competitors in the bustling downtown Jamiia Plaza are happy as hell that he moved his overcrowded (and always jam-packed) shop to the Twiga towers, which is about a 4 minute walk from them. Heck, I’ve lost track of how many store locations this dude has. I certainly wouldn’t waste my time competing with his ridiculously low prices if I were a newcomer. Advantage: The Kenyan consumer.

Mac addicts, reveal yourselves…
After becoming a Mac OS/X convert over the past 3 months or so, I find it painfully agonizing to even fathom tinkering with a Windoze (er Windows) machine. Ya know, after a while, using a Mac (iBook, MacBook, iMac) with OS/X becomes almost like a cleansing ritual. You realize just how fuc#ed up you were for ever getting into bed with Windoze…almost to the point of being ashamed for wasting so much precious computing time (money?) tracking down drivers, bug fixes, doing general registry maintenance, viruses, worms, trojan horses, and what not. Please, somebody bitch slap me for putting up with this sh!t. Damn, I feel sooo used and abused by Micro$oft (the $ sign in the name highlights just how bloody wealthy Microsoft is) and its hardware cronies.

Serenity now…
Anyhow, without having to reinvent the wheel and explain the entire process, let me just say that the reason you can’t install XP on a Toshiba A200 series laptop (or any modern PC) is simply because XP can’t see the SATA hard drive. SATA is just a better, faster, modern implementation of the ATA hard drive reference standard. Hence XP Setup gives you that “Yo dude…I don’t see a fuc#ing hard drive. Just where did you plan to install me? Please quit and leave me alone…as#hole” message. Well, it might as well have said that. But don’t despair folks, my trusty search companion (Google) was more than willing to help me sort out my problem of ditching Vista for XP.

Get the goods here…
Without further adieu, here are the links you should browse:

• Download nLite (deployment tool for bootable unattended Windows installation)
• Toshiba A2oo drivers support forum on Whirlpool.net.au (great job Zofod, thanks for the private download link)
• Satellite A205-S5804 and WinXP (BSOD on first boot) – Any help appreciated!
  
• The Technology Muse
• Downgrading Windows Vista Home Basic to XP Pro on Toshiba A205-S5800
• Downgrade vista to xp with your Toshiba A200 PSAE3C-xxxxxx Model
• Marvell Yukon drivers

Final thoughts…
Please don’t ever let your friends (perhaps your enemies) use Windows Vista Basic on a damn Celeron (a Core 2 Duo is okay) computer. You’ll find your machine will run a lot faster (and more reliably) because it’s not stuck with all of Vista’s alleged improvements. Micro$oft, you guys really screwed up on this one. And shame on Toshiba for making it so difficult to track down the XP drivers for their A200 series laptop. It’s as if M$ put a gun to their heads in a Tokyo boardroom and threatened to pull the trigger if they gave customers the opportunity to ditch awful Vista. I’m loving my Mac OS/X computing even more now. Why? Because Windoze users (like I once was) are suckers for cheap computing. Always remember this: “You get what you pay for” and “Time is money.” Right?

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Related links:

• OS X or Windows Vista?
• MacBooks rock, mega patch for OS X
• Downgrading from XP to Vista
• NoteBook Review Member Vista Tips & Tweaks Guide (stuck with Vista? Try these tweaks!)
• Top Windows Vista Tweaks You Can Find
• Windows Vista: The Complete Guide: How To Make Vista Start, Run and Shutdown Faster