[vox-tech] Anyone have experience with Windows XP & Linux on a Laptop?

[Jonathan Stickel]

I have a Compaq Presario 715US which I bought in April and now have dual 
boot WinXP / Redhat-8.0.  Compaq/HP only supports WinXP on this machine, 
but I imagine all the hardware warranties are still valid.  I had 
several hardware compatibility issues, the most major being ACPI support 
(no APM on this machine).  However, because it is a high volume model 
laptop, I found tons of howtos and previous experiences on the web, 
including custom kernel configurations.  I am sure that no matter what 
laptop you buy, you can make it work with Linux.  Some may just take 
more work than others.

One recommendation:  partition your hardrive into 3 parts: 1 for WinXP, 
1 for Linux (including boot and swap, etc.), and 1 as FAT32 for files 
you want to see by both OS's.  I read that NTFS writing is still 
unstable in Linux.  If you only have a disk image for WinXP (as I did), 
you indeed will have trouble partitioning first and then installing 
WinXP.  In that case you can use the latest version of Partition magic, 
which now can re-partition NTFS and Ext3, along with everything else.

Jonathan


Larry Ozeran wrote:

>Thanks to everyone for all of your suggestions. :)
>
>To clarify, I have _not_ bought the laptop yet. I was looking for questions
>to ask before a purchase. You have supplied me with many, thank you.
>
>I had not considered disk swapping. I had planned to store all dictations
>on the windows partition, which could then be read by the Linux software
>(and do batch updates since reboots would be required to switch OS'). I
>suppose if I used a Zip or USB storage device to transfer data, swapping
>hard disks (and rebooting) could also work. (Anyone have good results with
>the USB keychain storage devices under both Linux and Windows?)
>
>As extensive as linux-on-laptops is, I could not find EXACT model identifer
>matches to the models I found available for purchase. (DELL Inspiron 4100
>listed, but 4150 being sold; eight Sony Vaio PCG-R505 models on the web
>site, but none that I found available for sale.) I guess it's still caveat
>emptor and hope that the salesperson I ask questions about systems knows
>what they are talking about (winmodems, IRQ conflicts, graphics cards,
>PCMCIA).
>
>Did anyone have problems with warranty issues after converting to a dual
>boot laptop? Any problems with reinstalling Windows after repartitioning
>the drive (i.e. only had a CDROM image and not a true install)?
>(I presume that both of these issues would go away if I choose the "swap
>hard disks" recommendation.)
>  
>