Replying to Torrenting an operating system?

basically...vista is the worst operating system in the world...and after buying a 4 grand laptop(CLAIM...but its canadian) and finding that nothing works and everything i try to fix starts new problems ive decided to go back to xp. Now i dont have any old xp discs lying around and cant find anyone with one and since im cheap and dont really want to buy one how sketchy is it to torrent one?...and would i be able to convert my files from vista to xp?..but i guess i could just back up the files i want to keep just wondering.