Quoting Ronald Wiplinger <ronald@elmit.com>:
I want to use a notebook computer with Windows XP and Linux. I need Windows for Office (including Visio) and Project, while I need for developing and connection to otherLinux systems. What is the best setup for that? Dualboot and vmware?
What should I take care when I purchase the notebook?
bye
Ronald
If you need to run highly interactive programs (i.e. Quake or any action game, a Spanish tutorial with sound and video) under both OSes, dual boot. VMware was very poor with video and sound, is getting better. If you just occasionally need the other OS, VMware or Wine are possibilities. VMware requires lots of memory. Win XP requires at least 128MB of its own, so 256MB is a minimum for VMware, 512MB is better. If you choose dual boot, be sure and shutdown, not suspend to disk, when switching OSes. It seems like it should work, but I ended up with corrupted file systems in both Linux and WinXP. Not every time, but often enough. Reinstalling WinXP and all applications, plus restoring the data from backups is no fun. To fix Linux I only needed to run fschk from a rescue CD. I think there are rescue CDs for Windows, but I don't have one yet. Linux does mount the WinXP partition, but read-only. Windows doesn't see the Linux partitions. IBM Thinkpads are supported in Linux except for the hard disk protection mechanism. I think the finger print read support is non-existant or shaky. Support for the ATI graphics chip is a problem, you can have either 3D acceleration or suspend, but not both. HTH, Jeffrey