Running XP on a Dell Laptop (WinXP Pro SP2)

[BobH]

I'm looking at buying a Dell laptop (to keep me company during hip replacement surgery). It's not got a lot of memory or a lot of speed but it should handle web surfing and email while I'm abed. From all I read XP is smaller, faster, better for what I plan to use the laptop. (Plus I don't like being told to move along by the vendor - even at age 66.)

The laptop (Dell Inspiron 1501, AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology MK-36, 2.0GHz, Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic) has a SATA drive and a PATA drive. Am I likely to run into driver problems if want to put XP-Pro SP2 on this desktop. I have a spare XP-Pro license. Where should I look to find the driver ID so I can be certain that all will play well together. I'm assuming that I will have to go through a complete disk reformat and repartitioning and full installation of XP-Pro, but I'd like to know if there are any gotcha's that Dell and Microsoft have cooked up.

Any gotcha's I should prepare for? Any how-to's you'd like to send me to?

[Kropot68]

IMHO you should consider upgrading from Vista Basic to Vista Home Premium SP1 rather than opting for XP-Pro SP2 assuming that your Inspiron would have at least 1 GB of RAM. Of course you would not be able to use the Aero Glass interface but this would not be a big loss.

Vista beats XP in security and mobility. Examples of the latter: much faster return to life from sleep mode than XP; SyncCenter much better that the XP add-on SyncToy for connecting with external devices. The bundled applications with Vista HP are overall much better than those with XP.

[StuartR]

When buying a laptop it is really important to make sure that drivers are available for the Operating System you plan to run, because laptops often have custom hardware components.

Many new laptops do not have suitable drivers for downgrading from Vista to XP, but some vendors have Windows XP laptops available for people who don't want Vista. For example if you really want a DELL laptop then look here.

If you really want a laptop running Windows XP then I suggest you search for a laptop with XP pre-installed by the vendor.

StuartR

[kaplinb]

Consider Dell Latitude D530 instead:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...~tab=bundlestab

It comes with Windows XP pre-installed. The specs are close to Inspiron, but Latitude is rather for business, than for home users.
Also you can choose 14-inch D630 or 12-inch D430 model.

[BobH]

Thanks all! I'm gonna give Vista HE a try and if I don't like it or it runs too slow on this machine, I'll give installing XP a try. I'll also probably experiment with LINUX on this system eventually.