What OS to put on notebook?

[cnhoff]

Would you install either XP or 2000 on a P3M-850 with 256MB RAM laptop? Can i expect decent performance from XP when turning of all the bells and whistles?

 

[prosaic]

I run Windows XP Pro on a PIIIm 500 with 256 MB of RAM, and I leave ALL the bells and whistles turned on. I tried turning them off, but it made no real difference in responsiveness. The slow thing about this system is the HD, and the bells and whistles just don't make that much difference in time spent in drive access. I guess it might depend somewhat upon your video subsystem. This one is the ATi 8MB RAGE Mobility P. My guess is that your 850 will be reasonably lively running Windows XP.

- prosaic

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: cnhoff
Would you install either XP or 2000 on a P3M-850 with 256MB RAM laptop? Can i expect decent performance from XP when turning of all the bells and whistles?

XP, the wireless autoconfig is nice for laptops (presuming you use wireless)
Bill

 

[notfred]

XP or win2k is not an OS Decision. That's like saying "Which car should I buy, the red ford focus, or the darker red ford focus?"

 

[prosaic]

Whether you agree that this is an "OS decision" or not, is immaterial. There are significant functional differences between Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Those differences are unimportant to some people, and very important to others. They are not sufficiently close in design or behavior to be accurately likened to two different colors of Ford Focus. Bad car analogy. Especially when we're talking about a portable computer with an LCD display.

- prosaic

 

[dpopiz]

well, I can't give you a really useful opinion, but I've heard that xp is the way to go on a laptop
btw, prosaic, definitely true: I conisder win2k a Godsend, but would banish xp straight to hell if I ever got the chance!

 

[fingerprints]

I use XP Pro on my laptop and I can't imagine anything sweeter. I would say XP all the way.

 

[JOSEPHLB]

I've been running Windows 2000 on my Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop for quite some time now...

It runs very very smooth for a PIII 700 , 128 MB system... better than I thought actually.. Installation and setup was a breeze.

I've tried XP on the same laptop, and performance was actually about the same. I do disable active desktop and all the flashy stuff though. Both OS's seem to run about the same on my configuration.

 

[ultimatebob]

Windows 2000 would probably run faster on your laptop, but Windows XP will look nicer. Performance would be decent either way on a system with 256MB of RAM, however.