Got a new Asus notebook here in Taiwan back in July just after they started offering XP as an option. Previously it had been Vista or nowt, but they seemed to have heard the complaints.
Couldn't face the prospect of software incompatibility, printers etc when the rest of the company are still trundling on with win 2k.
So removed Vista business and installed xp from the recovery cd supplied by Asus for less than 15 quid.
Painless