I Did It!

I've finally managed to dual boot Vista Ultimate and XP Pro on my Compal HGL-30. I bought an 160GB HD, installed it and partitioned it into 60 and 100 gig parts. XP has 60GB and Vista has 100GB. It took a while to get the drivers right but I managed. Below are the specs of my notebook

• 
  CPU- T7400(2.16GHz)
  GPU- nVidia go7600
  Memory- 2GB
  HARDDRIVE- 160GB
  OS- XP Pro and Vsta Ultimate

 

i'm still wondering why would anyone really want to run vista... perhaphs if one could disable the graphics card intensive Gui, then it could be comparable to XP - and we might see the actual speed/performance improvements.. ahem, are there any? from what I see along window$ releases, each and next, apart from early ones like 95/98 -> win2k/xp, apart from incorporating some critical fixes and overall stability improvements, require more and more cpu/ram/whatever hardware power, whilst desktop environments on the opensource market all seem to aim for performance IMPROVEMENTS with the next release...

one could obviously say it's because window$ already IS the quickest possible solution and performance friendly one, hence only new features require more firepower... tho, is that really something one wants to believe? one has to remember as well, those open source solutions (i'm takling about KDE mostly here) do have far better and more capabilities compared to their m$ counterparts (kde3->xp).

just chucking my opinion out there... moving along... ;-)

 

This is the same argument that went on when XP came out. Ultimately (and I think, unfortunately) Vista is the next 'thing'. Yes, its a hog, but so was XP compared to windows 98. People don't like change for the most part, but such is life, and change is one of the most prevalent things in the tech industry.

Ultimately, 75% of computer users are brain dead as to what happens in their computer. That computer box on their desk could have magic leprechauns inside it, pulling levers and running in hamster wheels for all they would know (which would be totally awesome). Almost all package deal computers that Joe Blow would buy has Vista on it. Basically, the ignorant are getting Vista shoved down their throats. If your reading this, you probably already know that. The thing is, you, the 25% of computer users, have to show everyone else that Vista's effects look like garbage compared to Beryl (linux), that computer companies should be more open with their hardware, and show these people that they aren't slaves to a company that controls how the computer they paid for turns on.

Or just stop using your computer now. See that bright light? its called the 'sun'. That white thing in that box like structure at the end of your driveway? its called a 'mailbox'. Remember CD players? When most 'work' used to involve breaking a sweat? Remember Cellphones that only dialed numbers and didn't keep track of your stocks? A whimsical building called a Library?

Sorry for the ramble.

 

Not that I support Vista by any means.. But look at how much tend's to "just work" in an MS O/S after it's been on market for a short while. Sure it's bloated, but alot of that is stuff that makes user's feel all cushy that their auto-detect everything will work.

 

Despite popular opinion on this forum, I think Vista is all right. I've already ranted about this on another post, but one thing I don't think people are giving it credit for is Aero. I have used Beryl under Ubuntu, and I personally thought it was awesome aside from the rather unfortunate stability issues I ran into with it (roommate was unable to play WoW when it was enabled). However, I dont think it makes sense to compare it to Aero. Aero technology (whatever it is), is not being used to its full potential. Yes it is eye-candy compared to XP, but Aero is also only scratching the surface out of the box. Should software developers will it, a lot cooler things could be done with it, and the nice thing is that it IS integrated into the OS, unlike Beryl (for Ubuntu at least...). And, I wonder which of the two are more costly on system resources? I would guess Beryl but I could totally be wrong...

More on topic w/ the first post:
I have to admit, I have trouble understanding why one would dual boot both OS's except for the uncertainty of switching to Vista. Almost everything can work that works in XP if you try hard enough... Congrats on the dual boot though, I guess. I think its too frustrating to dual boot on my laptop and I only have 100gb, so it's not my thing.

 

Well, the comparison between beryl and vista is hardly a good comparison anyway, beryl is useless as a WM and it's an unnecesary resource hog imho. sure, it looks neat, but mostly just as to prove what the open source community can do (hey, look here, we can have eyecandy too!) rather than to create something well usable from bottom up. what I meant was, I think if you develop a new OS/DE/whatever, it should be FASTER, better, improved, etc. rather than a higher hardware hog.

and before anyone rambles on how "it's the market's way", "hardware vendors need to push new stuff", "people want eyecandy", etc etc. I remind yous, I'm not looking for explanations for such behaviour, because i think it's wrong from top to bottom. unless it had incorporated something useful, really. that's the advantage i see in opensource and (mainly) free software - the reason for it being developed is need at first, money comes later (once the piece of software gets discovered by someone who wishes to support it financially). so the money isn't the first reason for development, it comes as a helper later on after some initial work is done- not rotting away the work behind the project, which imho is a great thing since money on its own, is by me a long-fallen virtue, broken by design if taken as a value itself.

neat job on the dual booting, to not be completely offtopic. you could run XP or OSX (i think you can get that on x86 now?) and use vmware to boot vista on it... i think it's starting to incorporate opengl/direct3d support. maybe it's still beta/alpha tho, dunno.

regards,

//m.

 

The real problem with this is that people don't pay for stuff when they don't think they are getting something worth their money, when it comes to software, stuff can only act as fast as your brain can process it, which nobody really operates at on a conscious level. To compensate this, they have to cram new features in, and this is where your slowdown comes from. If speed alone were as good as it needed to be, we would all still be using windows 98

That, and you wouldn't buy new software if your hardware already ran it maxed out =P