Will the Latitude E-series be XP friendly?

So I imagine they may not be shipping out with an option for XP. Should it be fairly easy to dual-boot with XP/Vista or exclusively install XP?

 

If Dell provides drivers...

 

I dont believe they will. It will be for sale after Microsoft discontinues XP for new pc's. Come June, all new pc's will be vista with no xp option.

 

Of course, it's still at least 2-3 months until the earliest Latitude E actually comes out, maybe you should wait until it's actually released - you might get more accurate answers. What's wrong with Vista?

 

Ubuntu...Ubuntu...Ubuntu...Ubuntu...Ubuntu...Ubuntu...

*sways back and forth hypnotically*

 

Yes. Apparently, Microsoft won't be letting OEMs sell XP anymore. But most larger companies have get their licenses directly from Microsoft, and they can upgrade whenever they're good and ready... so they'll still need to run XP on these machines for a while. I'd be really shocked if the new Latitudes didn't support XP, or if Dell didn't offer XP drivers for them.

 

I can see Dell offering the XP drivers, but I can't see them outright offering XP with the E Series.

 

Agreed, isn't it June that XP will only be available on UMPCs?

Large businesses have volume licensing, so it isn't that big of a problem so long as there are drivers available.

Greg

 

Right, but what im thinking is since dell will not sell them with xp, why would they make the drivers? It probably will happen, but not direct from dell.

 

Because their large-business customers don't use preinstalled OSes anyway... they get their licenses directly from Microsoft and install what they want.

And as long as they need to offer XP drivers for large businesses... there isn't much additional cost in offering the XP drivers to anyone else who wants them.