Most of the laptops/notebooks come with Windows Vista flavors these days and it is not what all consumers like. Some prefers to stay in Windows XP due to less demanding resources and quicker response. I’ll touch a bit on why selecting XP over Vista and vice versa followed by how to do it (excerpt)
Windows XP or Vista?
Well, we should really moving to Vista by now ideally speaking. It is the current technology and a better product in some ways. Windows XP was created in 2000 which mean it was 8 years ago!!! For an IT software, 8 years is a feat which is hard to beat.
Here is why you want to consider XP over vista:
- You require the maximum of what your hardware (Storage, Memory, CPU, etc) can deliver
- You are not ready to spend weeks or months to learn a new operating system
- Your machine that may not be able to deliver the same performance in Vista compared to XP
- Simplicity and familiarity are your primary criteria in evaluating this.
Bear in mind, there are some catches staying with Windows XP:
- Microsoft, in all its best economic interest, would not develop XP much further. It rather sell Vista or create a more compelling substitute of Vista.
- Service Pack 3 may be the last SP there is.
- In a couple of years, the support for it will end. There has been a strong demand for Microsoft to extend this, but I am not aware on the last update.
- Architecturally, it is less secure than Vista, thus improperly configured XP has higher vulnerability.
You may want to consider Vista over XP for:
- You want to keep up to date with current Windows OS life cycle
- You like the new User Interface and it’s cool effects
- You feel assured with increased security in Vista
- You don’t mind trading storage, performance for all benefit that Vista can offer
- You have new machines that are certified/designed to work with Vista.
Having said that, some people have opted to have a dual boot. I personally dropped the idea. It is simply too much work and often a failed attempt to make both OS working with the software that I’m running. Even if I want to have access to two OS, I’d use two separate hard disk.
Now supposed that your notebook (In this case, I’ll pick Lenovo Thinkpad as an example) comes with Vista and you’d switch over to XP, there are options to do this. You can either purchase a XP recovery CD for the notebook (Only Vista Business and may be Ultimate have this option). Once you get hold of the CDs, just boot-up using the first CD and follow the prompt. You’ll be running XP in no time with all drivers installed. The most that you need is to install System Update and update all drivers to curent version.
If Recovery CD is not an option i.e. you are using Vista Home (Basic/Premium), then you’d need to do some work. The option is either to purchase a XP license or use your existing one. Using illegitimate means are not recommended as Microsoft can detect this and surpress any future updates that you need.
A very good article is written here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=188992 While it’s a good article, I can’t seems to follow every steps. So this post is meant to complement parts that I felt missing.
- When downloading drivers for Wireless and Ethernet devices, it can be confusing as they are at least two options each. For X61, choose Intel Wireless and Intel Ethernet. If memory serves me good, A centrino laptop should use Intel Wireless networking.
- Slight deviation from the order did not make any adverse effect on my attempt.
- The defrag from command-line didn’t work for me, so I use a normal GUI one
- Ultranav utility and some others that are mentioned can be installed easily with SystemUpdate. Make sure you have downloaded and installed .NET runtime and then install the System update. It’ll detect any mising/obselete drivers (in most cases) and update them for you automatically.
Thinkpad advantage
I used to be on the Acer camp, as they are the first ones to come up with latest Intel CPUs and chipsets. The price are reasonably affordable. After a few years, I stayed away from it. This is mainly due to its short product lifecyle. Imagine you purchase a laptop today, and Acer only updates their drivers no more than 1 year. So if price/performance is important, it can be your choice.
Lenovo (used to be IBM’s) Thinkpad were outside of the radar due to its price tag and relatively lower specification from the competitor. I came to reliase the best of ThinkPad later on. Thinkpad are strong (you can drop it and it still survives), it has a longer lifecycle (>3 years in some produts I have), and the SystemUpdate is a major plus. Again, SystemUpdate is a piece of software that automatically detect your machine configuration and offers you to download and install everything at one go. This is a time saver. Really.
The conservative design in ThinkPad seems to increase durability and quality of the product. The gripes that I have with the series is that the high-pitch noise when the machine is under standby and relatively hot when in use.
I got my X61 recently, the first portable machine I have without sacrificing much of the computing power that I need. It’s about time the form factor and computing power to co-exist together…
Practical Advice
- Consider carefully which Operating system you want to use. Opting for both when you don’t have a very good reason is a resource waste.
- Known your technical capabilities in setting up the system you want. For those who are not familiar with reimaging or configuring a new OS would be better off with pre-loaded system
- Always create Recovery CDs as soon as you get the laptop. They can be used later when you need to restore the laptop in working condition.
- Consider building a clean XP instead of a bloated recovery CD. You’ll not get all those Shareware (Norton) and other unncessary software. You’d need to spend time to build the system though.
- Create image of you system in stages, so that you can restore to each stages easily.
Tags: Clean, downgrade, IBM, Install, lenovo, thinkpad, Vista, Windows, XP
