Dual-booting a Lenovo-bought T60p

[lax]

My 'simple' goal, is to buy a Thinkpad T60p and dual-boot it with Linux and Vista.

So, I wanted to make sure that I would get the physical Vista DVD with the T60p so i can format and reinstall whenever I pleased. I called them up and they said that was not possible, all they offer are restore CDs (and even then only if I called tech support reporting a problem, they wouldn't be delivered with the thinkpad).

The next thought was to just buy a T60p without any operating system installed, buy Vista separately, and then dual boot the computer with Linux/Vista. I read of people online being able to order a thinkpad without an OS by calling up and doing so over the phone. I spent like 10 minutes talking to a guy and trying to ask from every angle if it was possible to get a thinkpad without anything installed on it. No success.

I mentioned the ads on the web page that mentioned the T60p as the perfect candidate for Linux, and he said I still had to get it with Windows installed on it first, in which case I still wouldn't be given the corresponding CD/DVD for that installation of windows.

I just want to be able to buy Vista and be able to hold in my hand a DVD that says Vista on it... Not some backup/restore cd, that way I can repartition and reinstall things the way I want. No recovery partition or nonsense like that.

What am I supposed to do? Am I out of luck? I'm considering buying the cheapest version of Windows (XP Home) that comes with the T60p, and then just buying a copy of Vista separately. But I'd really rather not pay for a copy of Windows that I'll never be able to use.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Jedacite]

I just want to be able to buy Vista and be able to hold in my hand a DVD that says Vista on it... Not some backup/restore cd, that way I can repartition and reinstall things the way I want. No recovery partition or nonsense like that.

I just thought that I would add my comments as I currently run XP and Linux on my T60.

The backup restore software is actually pretty good, you can actually have it restore the entire laptop back to factory or to actually install the OS image into an existing partition.

The steps that I took to get my T60 setup are as follows:

1. Re-Partition entire hard drive leaving ThinkVantage Partition alone.
2. Use Rescue and Recovery to "Restore" windows to the C:\
3. Install Linux.

In fact sda1 is WinXP, sda2 is Linux Swap, sda3 is Linux and sda4 is ThinkVantage.

I just wanted to let you know that although I don't have any physical media you can create it yourself, and you can also re-install whenever you please. I actually prefer it on hard disk as it removes the step of myself looking for where I actually mis-placed the restore / install DVD.

I should also note that this is the first time that Linux has worked with everything I've ever needed pretty much out of the box. There was no fiddling or manually downloading of components. Everything, including Suspend and Hibernate works which I really like.

The one thing that I will warn you about, for whatever reason disabling the modem in the bios also disables the sound card.