Dell Inspiron E1705 rollback of Vista to WinXP Media

(Forgive the duplicate post on this as I posted on Vista forum as well...)

I've read some of the Pros/Cons for Vista on the forum but was wondering how to find information on the forums archived threads detailing Vista rollback on Dell E1705 Inspiron laptop originally configures with WinXP Media?
Would certainly appreciate your explanation of course as well. The laptop is my son's, I've never had a laptop and only worked with them occasionally and several years ago. I remember mostly they were quite proprietary in the way they were built, in terms of what devices/software you could install or upgrade to; at least some of the early ones that I remember from work. And of course every things as far as repairs or parts seemed much more expensive.
The other thing is, I don't remember if the installation CDs were shipped with the laptop. It was 2 Christmases ago and son was back in college before I had much of chance to look at it.
Thanks for any advice or directions.
Greynold

Hi Grumpy9117,
Sorry I was not able to check back in for awhile. Problem is with son's laptop, the original hard drive crashed after 4 months and I don't have any idea how son rebuilt the HDD replacement Dell sent or if he just went with the Vista upgrade install (it was provided free when we bought and Vista had not yet been released as I recall).
He'll be in next week and I'll be able to get more info then.
Greynold