Last XP-Based Gateway?

Hey,

Does anyone know which Gateway laptop model(s) were the last to natively carry XP?

I have a lovely, but old, 6023GP that, despite much care and love, is simply too slow for what I want to use it for these days. It's HDD is also too small (40GB) and IDE, and they're ridiculously expensive to upgrade.

I want to replace it with a newer model XP-based Gateway laptop. Unfortunately, I can't do much to upgrade this one, since the ram is maxed out and the CPU is welded to the motherboard--or so I've read. I don't want to pay for a new computer right now, and would have no desire to go on a driver hunt to make a Win 7-native laptop run XP in any event.

Audacity doesn't record worth a damn in Windows 7, and I'm doing a good deal of work that entails doing just that with the spoken word. Also, there are some old games that just don't work well in Windows 7--even with XP mode or other forms of virtualized XP installed.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I've done quite a bit of Googling on this, but I must be typing in the search criteria wrong or something. I've had very little luck finding information that clearly states which models are older than the 6023. I believe it was built in 2006, though I bought mine in late 2007, just before glossy screens and SATA HDDs became the norm.

 

Not going to make a difference which FX you get. Mainly because you can wipe the drive and install XP on anything.

 

Hello, I've been using Gateway NX860XL for the last 1.5 years and I must tell you that's a great laptop. Mine had Win XP installed but I know that some other run Vista. This model came out in 2006 (not sure) and 2007, last for XP and first for Vista. I installed Win 7 and it runs perfectly with 4GB of ram.
It's got 17" screen, 1920x1200 (!), T7200 CPU, up to 4GB ddr2 ram and Geforce Go 7900 video card which is great for the lappy of those years.
I bought it for $60 on ebay, it had dead Nvidia card. I bought new one for about $90 including shipping and here you go - the perfect laptop for office stuff, internet browsing and even some games.
I can definitely recommend this one if you need a cheap laptop!

 

What about drivers? I understood that certain drivers are a b&*#h to find for XP on Vista/Windows 7-native computers, sound drivers in particular. Since sound is the reason for this whole search, not being able to use it would be... problematic.

Not that I'm really looking for an FX, necessarily, or even a 17" screen. I already have a p7805u fx that I use for most other business. It is triple-booted with two versions of Win 7 64-bit (one strictly for play, the other strictly for work) and one of Win 7 32-bit, because my $300+ PDF conversion program simply will not run in the 64-bit version of Windows 7, whatever the company's promises to the contrary.

The XP-based laptop I'd be looking for could have a 15" screen and that'd be fine. Certainly, it would make it easier to run around with, should I need to escape the noise of the house and run to the nearest coffee shop...

 

Gotcha. I think the biggest difference I have found is between 32 bit and 64 bit. Older hardware will not have 64 bit support. But all current hardware should have 32 bit support as of right now. I would expect that over time 32 bit driver development will taper off.

Seeming how Windows 7 contains an active license agreement for XP, I would assume that you could run Windows 7 32 bit on any newer hardware and have the best of both worlds.

Have you experimented with "Legacy" mode?

 

Yah. For whatever reason, though, Audacity still sounds awful when recorded in Windows 7, at least on my P 7805u FX. No matter how good your mic is (and mine is pretty darn good), it sounds like you recorded your script while standing far, far away. It's really frustrating because, in addition to being free, Audacity has always served my purposes quite excellently. And as I said earlier, a goodly chunk of my work right now requires good vocal recordings.

I considered giving Linux a try on the 6023GP, but I discovered, using another old, but younger than this computer, that the newer versions don't want to load on such an old computer. Also, there would still be the issue of enlarging the 40-Gig IDE hard drive (VERY expensive!) and playing with the few older games that just flat run better on the real XP, as opposed to a virtual machine running XP.

Okay, so, just to clarify: is there a possibility that I could run XP on a newer (early post-XP) Gateway and not have to hunt all over Hell and Back to find the drivers I need to make it run properly?

I did, by the way, find a possible deal for an older Gateway that could suit my needs on Ebay. It's an M465-E that's was leased by some company God-knows-how-long ago. It's processor is supposedly 2GHz and with 2GB of ram, up from the usual 1.83GHz and 1GB of ram. The hard drive is woefully small, but unlike my 6023GP, it's SATA, and I was planning to buy a larger one anyway. The only possible deal-breaker is the screen. it's matte, and I know from bitter experience that they just kill my eyes. The current bid price is $80, with $15 shipping. The seller has "Trusted Seller" status, and that means, in my experience, that he isn't trying to pawn off any bogus stuff.

Any opinions? Worth the purchase? EDIT: Never mind. It has been swooped.