This is probably a dumb question, but I would like a confirmation anyway. As usual, my laptop came with an OS already installed (XP Home), as well as a bunch of other junk already installed. I recently upgraded my desktop to vista, so I have an extra XP Pro sitting around. My question is if I can just reformat my laptop and do a clean install of XP Pro? I don't think the laptop vendor updated do anything worthwhile that Windows update will do.

Should be able to format it. One possible exception: I had a friend with a laptop from HP who said the drive was protected somehow and was unable to format it--he later sold it, before I could take a look at it. I think my friend's full of crap, but then again, HP does do crazy security things like that. So HP laptops might not be able to be formatted (easily).

Anyway, most laptops can be formatted same as any desktop. I formatted my laptop with XP just the other day, in fact.