Surely you just need to download the XP drivers for your SATA interface and supply them at install time. Assuming you have a floppy drive of course...

Or you can use the drivers and the XP install to create a new slipstream install with the drivers included.

I have one Vista machine now and while mixed, my experiences aren't as bad as most people's seem to be. There are definitely some puzzling user interface changes. But performance and stability have been fine for me. The only real negative side is the base memory usage, which appears to be a good 400-500MB higher than a typical XP box.

I definitely haven't seen the sluggish performance described by other people. Although admittedly it is being used mainly for doing Vista testing of some software I am working on.