Criticism of Windows Vista including Photoshop and WinRAR, also performed worse under Vista. Many low-to-mid-end machines that come with Windows Vista pre-installed suffer from exceptionally slow performance with the default Vista settings that come pre-loaded, and laptop manufacturers have offered to "downgrade" laptops to Windows XP—for a price. However, this "price" is unnecessary, as Microsoft allows users of Windows Vista and Windows 7 to freely "downgrade" their software by installing XP and then phoning a Microsoft representative for a new product key. When first released in November 2006, Vista performed file operations such as copying and deletion more slowly than other operating systems. Large
Management features new to Windows Vista also install updates to an offline Windows image, including updates, boot-critical device drivers, and language packs. Windows Vista introduced Component-Based Servicing (CBS) as an architecture for installation and servicing. The deployment of Windows Vista uses a hardware-independent image, the Windows Imaging Format (WIM). The image file contains the necessary bits of the operating system, and its contents are copied "as is" to the target system. Other system specific software, such as device drivers and other applications, are installed and configured afterwards. This reduces the time taken for installation of Windows Vista. Corporations can author their own image files (using the