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
Features new to Windows Vista users—was a significant source of power transition failures in previous versions of Windows and often resulted in decreased battery life, overheated systems, potential data loss, and an eventual user distrust of power-saving capabilities. During the development of Windows Vista, Microsoft indicated that it would allow the sleep process to be vetoed in the operating system, but subsequent investigations by the company revealed that this capability was frequently abused by application developers. However, administrators can still enable veto functionality through group policy. Windows Vista introduces a new Hybrid Sleep power-saving mode that combines hibernation and sleep mode functionality. When active, Hybrid