Is XP laptop friendly?

[Deimos]

My main box right now is an Inspiron 8k. Lately, I have been toying with the idea of putting XP on it. So I'm curious to know how laptop friendly XP is.

I know that 2k and laptops work well together, since I'm currently running 2k. And I would assume that XP would follow this trend. But assuming anything where M$ is concerned is just asking for trouble.

My Inspiron specs: 1Ghz P-III w/SpeedStep, 512MB ram, 40 GB HDD, GF2Go vid, ESS Maestro sound, ActionTek mini-pci modem/lan combo. This box is about 9 months old. From what I understand, XP should run well on the above hardware.

[Tarkin]

It rocks on laptops... cleartype alone made it worthwhile for me... I have a Dell Latitude l400... p3 700 with speed step also, 256 megs ram, 20g HD, 3com Nic, ActionTec Modem, Ati graphics, and everything just worked oob...

Later
Tarkin

[DiMaestro]

Yea, works great on my compaq presario 1700... Very good, much better than 2000 did.

[VooBass]

Unfortunately XP won't work on or install on and is not supported on my Dell Inspiron 7500 (450Mhz). Very annoying.

[IntelMole]

My sister's boyfriend has just got hold of an Athlon 4 laptop with PowerNow and a dvd drive and everything...

It has Windows XP on it and works like a dream... not that I much like Windows XP, but it's certainly starting to grow on me...

[Pauly]

I use XP on my Tosh Satellite 3000-214. Thats a 933 mobile PIII with nVidia GeForce2Go.

Lovely jubbly!

I suppose if you've got Win2k drivers then there isn't any reason why your laptop won't be supported in XP.

[lahaine]

I have an IBM T20 - PIII 700/SpeedStep, 256 MB, 20 GB, 3COM miniPCI NIC, S3 Savage/IX (damnit, no GF2G), etc. - and XP has installed and run very well indeed since release.

The out-of-the-box drivers found all the hardware fine, and there have been regular updates of drivers for graphics, network and other bits and bats through Windows Update. Stability and app compatibility is superb, and the way it manages laptop things such as battery management, standby and hibernation is far better than Win2K did, IMHO.

One gripe - I use a Nokia 6210 as a modem thorugh the IR port. When XP sees the phone with IR on, it is there as a modem, and I can dial out fine. Problem is, each time I connect with the phone, it defaults to 9.6kbps GSM. I have HSCSD, and when I change the modem settings to V.110 I can connect at 38kbps or even 43.2kbps. Every time I set thism every time it works fine, and every time when I take the phone away the settings are forgotten, as the modem disappears from the Modems part of Control Panel. A small pain, but enough to be annoying... anyone with ideas?

[IntelMole]

Iahaine, what about making a batch file or something that would do it automatically for you...

Is there any options that let you set the modem as removable, as if it were a USB drive...

No ideas other than that, sos,
IntelMole

[Xylker]

If you are installing XP, and you have the GF2Go you should update to the latest BIOS and XP Geforce 2 Go drivers (wxp_1640.exe) IF you fail to do so you will experience nasty crashes and instability

[nitrile]

I have an Inspiron 8.1K that now has XP installed. While I really don't personally like Cleartype it does seem quite suited to laptops, and has speedstep functionality built in (honest - make sure you set power profile to 'laptop' though).

I'll echo the warning Xylker gave, you will probably need both the latest BIOS and graphics drivers or you'll very likely get frequent and apparently random nvidia related bsods.

Hate XP on my desktop.

[Deimos]

Thanks for all the replies guys! Unfortunately, my question was well timed: I caught a (probable) virus yesterday that boffed my HD partition, forcing me to have to reinstall my OS.

So, I figured that if I have to reinstall, I might as well hop on the XP bandwagon. The install went well, and I'm liking the OS so far, but I haven't got all my apps back on the machine yet. I'll reserve my final judgement until then.

Also thanks for pointing out the BIOS/driver upgrades. I snagged both of those from Dell's site on Friday.

[Xylker]

One more thing, if you do not want XP to run the speedstep controls automatically you will have to set the power scheme to always on.