Toshiba Satellite T31 Laptop Comes Packaged with Vista & XP

We’ve spoken with many a colleague who, having taken up Vista, has been plagued by problems (primarily with device driver software compatibility issues) and few have been less than forthcoming about the their frustrations with Microsoft’s new Windows operating system – and, seemingly in a bid to offer its business customers somewhat of a safety net should it all become a bit too much, Toshiba’s new Satellite T31 laptop comes bundled with both Vista and XP offering its users a handy get out clause should Vista fail to impress.

Far from offering dual booting, Toshiba’s Satellite T31 laptop, which is being made available to Japanese consumers, comes with a single operating system installed whilst allowing users to revert back to XP (namely XP Professional) if so desired – and we certainly know of a few Vista owners who would happily loose Vista’s aesthetic gloss and do just that if such an option had been afforded to them in the same manner.

From a hardware perspective, the laptop itself is a fairly solid though ultimately rather pain 1.86GHz Celeron M based device coming with a mere 512MB of memory (which is curious from a Vista perspective), 80GB HDD, 15.4” WXGA screen and a duel DVD/CD-RW optical drive retailing for around $1565, though a faster 2GHz Core 2 Duo powered version is also available for around $1846.

And whist Satellite laptops are widely available outside Japan there’s no news as of yet as to whether the duel operating system package will make it across Japan’s borders any time soon – if at all.