I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to the
same software and data files at two different locations, and have decided
that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of hardware and
trying to keep them in synch.

Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I *need*
Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on anything else.

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7.
Is this likely? Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all
my USB-based devices?

Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)
or would I face the same issues as with 7? [One or two
half-way-decent-looking 'refurb' laptops are seemingly still available with
Vista].

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7.
Is this likely?

It's possible, yes. Some might work under the compatibility options in
Win 7. Some may just never work.

Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all my USB-based
devices?

Depends. Some will just work under Win 7 (probably). Some might have new
drivers available. Some won't. It's all a bit hit and miss.

Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)

No, no one is *ever* better off with Vista IMO.

or would I face the same issues as with 7?

Yes, but with less chance of being able to fix them. Win 7 is largely Vista
but fixed. It's far from perfect but a whole lot better than Vista.

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

Getting harder and harder particuarly for laptops. We have plenty of laptops
here that just won't run properly with XP as there are no drivers available
for the hardware.

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

This isn't really my area, but running an image of your old XP machine under
a virtual environment is a possible option if your new laptop is powerful
enough. VMware (can't remember what the free version is) or the Sun^WOracle
Virtualbox might be worth a look. You'd need something that offers the
physical to virtual migration tools. Get a laptop with decent amount of RAM
and if your existing machine isn't huge it might just work.

I have an XP, a Solaris and a Win 7 VM on my macbook and it works fine
under VMware for what I need.

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.

I'm writing this as a Solaris and MacOS user - but windows 7 is much better
than Vista. As for XP on new hardware - it's getting harder and harder.

Darren

On 12/03/2010 15:12, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In ,
Roger wrote:

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7.
Is this likely?

It's possible, yes. Some might work under the compatibility options in
Win 7. Some may just never work.

Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all my USB-based
devices?

Depends. Some will just work under Win 7 (probably). Some might have new
drivers available. Some won't. It's all a bit hit and miss.

Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)

No, no one is *ever* better off with Vista IMO.

or would I face the same issues as with 7?

Yes, but with less chance of being able to fix them. Win 7 is largely Vista
but fixed. It's far from perfect but a whole lot better than Vista.

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

Getting harder and harder particuarly for laptops. We have plenty of laptops
here that just won't run properly with XP as there are no drivers available
for the hardware.

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

This isn't really my area, but running an image of your old XP machine under
a virtual environment is a possible option if your new laptop is powerful
enough. VMware (can't remember what the free version is) or the Sun^WOracle
Virtualbox might be worth a look. You'd need something that offers the
physical to virtual migration tools. Get a laptop with decent amount of RAM
and if your existing machine isn't huge it might just work.

I have an XP, a Solaris and a Win 7 VM on my macbook and it works fine
under VMware for what I need.

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.

I'm writing this as a Solaris and MacOS user - but windows 7 is much better
than Vista. As for XP on new hardware - it's getting harder and harder.

Darren

Generally agree with you Darren.

For compatibility, you might need to stick to the 32-bit version of W7.

Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual
machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are
immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have
plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual machines.

Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort)
at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using
LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free to
get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop to
take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the main
computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't even
have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to you, but a
thought.

Indeed, if you have some things that won't run any other way, you could
remote access your current computer.

--
Rod

On 12/03/2010 15:49, Rod wrote:
On 12/03/2010 15:12, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In ,
Roger wrote:

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and
lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC
magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop
needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with
the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98,
Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work
under 7.
Is this likely?

It's possible, yes. Some might work under the compatibility options in
Win 7. Some may just never work.

Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all my USB-based
devices?

Depends. Some will just work under Win 7 (probably). Some might have new
drivers available. Some won't. It's all a bit hit and miss.

Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to
avoid!)

No, no one is *ever* better off with Vista IMO.

or would I face the same issues as with 7?

Yes, but with less chance of being able to fix them. Win 7 is largely
Vista
but fixed. It's far from perfect but a whole lot better than Vista.

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the
latest
version.]

Getting harder and harder particuarly for laptops. We have plenty of
laptops
here that just won't run properly with XP as there are no drivers
available
for the hardware.

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have
floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to
boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to
another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the
option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running.
Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from
which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks
like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

This isn't really my area, but running an image of your old XP machine
under
a virtual environment is a possible option if your new laptop is powerful
enough. VMware (can't remember what the free version is) or the
Sun^WOracle
Virtualbox might be worth a look. You'd need something that offers the
physical to virtual migration tools. Get a laptop with decent amount
of RAM
and if your existing machine isn't huge it might just work.

I have an XP, a Solaris and a Win 7 VM on my macbook and it works fine
under VMware for what I need.

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.

I'm writing this as a Solaris and MacOS user - but windows 7 is much
better
than Vista. As for XP on new hardware - it's getting harder and harder.

Darren

Generally agree with you Darren.

For compatibility, you might need to stick to the 32-bit version of W7.

Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual
machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are
immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have
plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual machines.

Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort)
at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using
LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free to
get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop to
take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the main
computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't even
have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to you, but a
thought.

Indeed, if you have some things that won't run any other way, you could
remote access your current computer.

I have just gone from XP SP3 on my old PC to Windows 7 64 bit on my new
one. Only had problem was with Alk co-pilot 7 which apparently is not
and will not be supported for Windows 7 64. I eventually googled enough
to find a workaround via a registry hack.
What I do find aggravating are the pop-up thumbnails from the taskbar. I
haven't managed to find a way to turn them off but have now set the
delay until they appear to 20000 (milli seconds).
Also disabled one of the security options in IE (which I very rarely
use) to save me having to override warnings every time I open digiguide
from a link in the taskbar.
One day I will find time to take a look at ubuntu but for the moment I
find windows 7 stable and quite good. Just a battle to do things my way
instead of how ms think everyone should do things.
I have got an overclocked core 7 cpu and 6gb of ram which probably helps.

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Rod
wrote:

Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual
machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are
immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have
plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual
machines.
Can you run USB-connected physical devices in a VM, or only software
applications? I'm thinking of things like my Midiman Uno MIDI interface, for
which there doesn't appear to be a W7 driver.

Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort)
at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using
LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free
to get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop
to take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the
main computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't
even have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to
you, but a thought.


That would presumably require a fairly fast internet connection at both
ends? At my main location, I have wired BB with a D/L speed of about 2Mbps
(U/L much slower) and at the other location, I'm currently using '3' mobile
internet, which struggles to get up to 500kbps (D/L) and 100kbps (U/L) - so
I guess that remote access would be pretty dire!
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 12/03/2010 17:08, Roger Mills wrote:
In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Rod
wrote:

Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual
machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are
immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have
plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual
machines.
Can you run USB-connected physical devices in a VM, or only software
applications? I'm thinking of things like my Midiman Uno MIDI interface, for
which there doesn't appear to be a W7 driver.

Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort)
at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using
LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free
to get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop
to take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the
main computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't
even have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to
you, but a thought.


That would presumably require a fairly fast internet connection at both
ends? At my main location, I have wired BB with a D/L speed of about 2Mbps
(U/L much slower) and at the other location, I'm currently using '3' mobile
internet, which struggles to get up to 500kbps (D/L) and 100kbps (U/L) - so
I guess that remote access would be pretty dire!

I spend a considerable proportion of my working life connected to
various machines across the country. No control over the net connection
at the far end. Varies from brilliant, through mostly fine, to a few
which are not much fun. At a guess, the ones that are not good are on
bottom end ADSL connections which are being used for many purposes other
than my access to that location. Wish I had some real numbers to give
you but we don't actually measure anything like traffic. Perhaps someone
else could advise?

The best technologies minimise traffic by caching and all sorts of
clever tricks. For me the best user experience is with RDP over a VPN.
(I just don't like the effect of connecting and disconnecting VPN
connections all day. But if it is all day to one location that is not
much of an issue.) Main reason is that RDP will set itself to use the
size of monitor you are connecting with (quite large in my case) whereas
LogMeIn and VNC use the real monitor size - and some sites I connect to
have postage stamps for monitors. But it is also quite fast and fluid.

I'd suggest you simply try it. For simplicity set up free LogMeIn on
your computer and try to access it from somewhere else. (That will need
a browser plugin on the computer you connect from. Works fine in IE and
Firefox.)

--
Rod

On 3/12/2010 11:08 AM, Roger Mills wrote:

Can you run USB-connected physical devices in a VM, or only software
applications? I'm thinking of things like my Midiman Uno MIDI interface, for
which there doesn't appear to be a W7 driver.

In my experience, Win7 will happily install most XP and Vista drivers.
Win7 successfully installed, and all my peripherals worked on my old
desktop, which was based on 6 year old MB, AMD 3200, and all the
associated old hardware. With 1GB of RAM, no less.

I think its really going to be luck of the draw on your peripherals
working in Win7. Best thing to do will be to Google your peripheral
along with Win7. Chances are other people have the same peripheral as
you do, and likely there will be a workaround.

Huge wrote:
On 2010-03-12, dmc@puffin. (D.M.Chapman) dmc@puffin wrote:

I have an XP, a Solaris and a Win 7 VM on my macbook and it works fine
under VMware for what I need.

FWIW, I run Windows XP, Solaris, Ubuntu(*) and Plan9(+) under VirtualBox under
Ubuntu.

(* Playing with new versions.)
(+ Very slowly. But it runs.)

I'm running XP in virtual box here.Native Debian.

If windos gets borked, revert to snapshot and as long as the DATA is on
the main machine not inside windows, windows is up and freshly installed
in 30 seconds!

On Mar 12, 3:31*pm, Huge wrote:

[...]
FWIW, I run Windows XP, Solaris, Ubuntu(*) and Plan9(+) under VirtualBox under
Ubuntu.

Out of interest, what do you run Plan9 for?

Thanks
J^n

On 12/03/2010 14:52, Roger Mills wrote:
Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

Macrium reflect? The free one does what I need it to do, and runs from a
CD for recovery.

"Clive George" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 12/03/2010 14:52, Roger Mills wrote:
Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have
floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to
another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is
this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which
to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks
like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

Yes, Ghost 14

On 12/03/10 14:52, Roger Mills wrote:

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most applications will run under the 32-bit version of Windows 7. Some
older programs won't install under the 6-bit version. If you are going
to have 4Gb or more of memory then the 64-bit version is definitely
recommended. If you buy a machine with an OEM license you have to choose
32 or 64 bit at the time of purchase. Take a look at the Microsoft site
to compare the different versions and licenses.


Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7.
Is this likely? Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all
my USB-based devices?

That depends a lot on the devices. Common types of devices from major
manufacturers will probably be OK. Obscure devices from obscure (and
possibly long-gone) manufacturers may have problems. Those will be worse
with the 64-bit version.


Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)
or would I face the same issues as with 7? [One or two
half-way-decent-looking 'refurb' laptops are seemingly still available with
Vista].

There is nothing that Vista gives you that isn't done as well or better
by W7.


How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

XP or W2K should install on modern hardware, but you may have trouble
finding drivers for very new devices.


Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives?

Thumb drive or possibly built-in memory-card slots. External USB
hard-drives or DVD.

In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

The machine is likely to come with a bootable recovery disk that will
restore the disk to its ex-factory state. Personally I would get a
humungous external disk-drive or two and back up an image to that,
probably using Linux. I might even configure it with a minimal host OS
and do all of my work on virtual machines that can be cloned at will.


Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.

If I was buying a new Windows machine today I would go for 64-bit Windows 7.


--
Bernard Peek

In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 12/03/10 14:52, Roger Mills wrote:

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most applications will run under the 32-bit version of Windows 7. Some
older programs won't install under the 6-bit version.

I can see how that might be a problem



--
geoff

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:52:56 +0000, Roger Mills wrote:
Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I
*need* Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on
anything else.

Personally, I run Linux as the host OS and Windows in a VM for when I
absultely have to use it for something (extremely rarely in my case). I
really wouldn't trust Windows as the host, in part due to poor design and
in part simply due to it being the target of most security threats.
Having it in a VM makes it very easy to back up the raw data and restore
from a previous point if some nasty does get in.

How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have
floppy drives?

I've used g4l (ghost for linux) before, booting from a CD, to do a raw
backup of a Windows machine. Make sure that your target backup machine
can handle the size of the file (I need to tweak my current Linux desktop
as by default it won't create anything over 2GB in size) and that if
you're using FTP to transfer the data, your target FTP server can cope
with the size (some Windows flavours seem to quietly stop accepting data
beyond 4GB)

cheers

Jules

Some of your applications are REALLY old. Quicken 98? Really, you
should make upgrading to later versions a bit of a priority. [In my
case, I upgraded from Quicken 98 to 2000 to 2003 to 2006 to 2010]. One
problem is that you have waited SO long that you may not be able to move
from 98 to 2010; you might have to try to find someone who actually has
installation CDs of at least one or a few intermediate versions.
Similarly with the other products.

I would recommend that you go with Windows 7 Professional, 32-bit. This
will give you the most options and backwards compatibility. Most things
will probably work, but it's absolutely the case that not everything
will. The reason I suggested Professional instead of Home Premium is
that with Professional, you have the option, at least, of using "XP
Mode". I think that Win 7 is better than Vista in just about every way.

Also, be certain that the CPU in whatever laptop you are going to get
supports "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is required for
running "XP Mode", and is only supported by about half of current CPUs.

You can ALWAYS take a bootable floppy and make a bootable CD that will
behave EXACTLY like the floppy (although, of course, you won't be able
to write to it).


Roger Mills wrote:
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to the
same software and data files at two different locations, and have decided
that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of hardware and
trying to keep them in synch.

Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I *need*
Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on anything else.

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7.
Is this likely? Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all
my USB-based devices?

Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)
or would I face the same issues as with 7? [One or two
half-way-decent-looking 'refurb' laptops are seemingly still available with
Vista].

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.

In message , Barry Watzman
writes
I would recommend that you go with Windows 7 Professional, 32-bit. This
will give you the most options and backwards compatibility. Most
things will probably work, but it's absolutely the case that not
everything will. The reason I suggested Professional instead of Home
Premium is that with Professional, you have the option, at least, of
using "XP Mode". I think that Win 7 is better than Vista in just about
every way.

Also, be certain that the CPU in whatever laptop you are going to get
supports "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is required for
running "XP Mode", and is only supported by about half of current CPUs.

I've just been through this choice process with a friend.

Many business laptops come with Win7Pro with a separate XP Pro DVD to
enable you to revert if necessary, and that's what I would definitely go
for.
Win7 Pro lets you make a Microsoft full backup, so it's easy to be sure
you have a chance of reverting back to Win7 if you feel the need and you
should have all the bits to do this with no hassle.

We looked at machines between about 450 and 1200 uk pounds, and
eventually she chose one at the low end because she didn't seem to see
much difference, and liked that keyboard.
I suggested Win7, 64 for future proofing, but there seemed few of these.

I've run virtual machines, but I really think that on a laptop
simplicity is all unless there is a real reason for multiple OS's.

At the moment she is still on 32-bit Win 7, having got most of her old
programs to run. This included an old version of Quickbooks.
She found the Win7 "import all your old stuff" application a nightmare.
It took all night to do it and put the old software all over the place
in her new machine. She is still sorting through it.
--
Bill

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Barry Watzman
wrote:
Some of your applications are REALLY old. Quicken 98? Really, you
should make upgrading to later versions a bit of a priority. [In my
case, I upgraded from Quicken 98 to 2000 to 2003 to 2006 to 2010]. One
problem is that you have waited SO long that you may not be able
to move from 98 to 2010; you might have to try to find someone who
actually has installation CDs of at least one or a few intermediate
versions. Similarly with the other products.


But why? My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"! Quicken 98 does
everything I want - so why upgrade? [I did get a free millennium-proof
upgrade for it - but it probably wasn't necessary because my wife is still
using an even earlier version quite successfully!]

I would recommend that you go with Windows 7 Professional, 32-bit. This
will give you the most options and backwards compatibility. Most things
will probably work, but it's absolutely the case that not
everything will. The reason I suggested Professional instead of Home
Premium is that with Professional, you have the option, at least, of
using "XP Mode". I think that Win 7 is better than Vista in just
about every way.
Also, be certain that the CPU in whatever laptop you are going to get
supports "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is required for
running "XP Mode", and is only supported by about half of current
CPUs.

Useful advice - thanks!


You can ALWAYS take a bootable floppy and make a bootable CD that will
behave EXACTLY like the floppy (although, of course, you won't be able
to write to it).


Yes, I guessed that that must be possible. Would you care to elaborate as to
how to go about it?
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

"But why? My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!"

Because it is broken, only the cracks are not on the surface.

There is NO support by Intuit for anything over about 3 years old.
There are security issues. And once you get more than about 6 years
old, you may not be ABLE to migrate from the old version to a current
version. What I did was do multiple migrations at about 3-year
intervals. The problem is, you have waited so long that you may not be
able to find the necessary intermediate versions. But, more to the
point, if you continue to wait, doing so will get increasingly more
difficult. You will get to a point where you won't be able to migrate
and will lose everything.

To make a bootable CD from a bootable floppy, you need a program such as
"Roxio" or "Nero". They have the ability to make a bootable CD using a
floppy as the boot image; it's a standard feature of "full feature"
burning products. When you boot from the CD, the floppy image will come
up as A: and the rest of the CD will come up as some other drive letter,
PROVIDING that the OS booted from the image (e.g. the floppy) had
generic CD drivers (e.g. a device driver and MSCDEX) [if these are not
present, the rest of the CD won't be accessible, which may not be
relevant anyway, e.g. if you are flashing a bios or running a memory or
disk diagnostic that originally was on a bootable floppy].



Roger Mills wrote:
In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Barry Watzman
wrote:
Some of your applications are REALLY old. Quicken 98? Really, you
should make upgrading to later versions a bit of a priority. [In my
case, I upgraded from Quicken 98 to 2000 to 2003 to 2006 to 2010]. One
problem is that you have waited SO long that you may not be able
to move from 98 to 2010; you might have to try to find someone who
actually has installation CDs of at least one or a few intermediate
versions. Similarly with the other products.


But why? My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"! Quicken 98 does
everything I want - so why upgrade? [I did get a free millennium-proof
upgrade for it - but it probably wasn't necessary because my wife is still
using an even earlier version quite successfully!]

I would recommend that you go with Windows 7 Professional, 32-bit. This
will give you the most options and backwards compatibility. Most things
will probably work, but it's absolutely the case that not
everything will. The reason I suggested Professional instead of Home
Premium is that with Professional, you have the option, at least, of
using "XP Mode". I think that Win 7 is better than Vista in just
about every way.
Also, be certain that the CPU in whatever laptop you are going to get
supports "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is required for
running "XP Mode", and is only supported by about half of current
CPUs.

Useful advice - thanks!


You can ALWAYS take a bootable floppy and make a bootable CD that will
behave EXACTLY like the floppy (although, of course, you won't be able
to write to it).


Yes, I guessed that that must be possible. Would you care to elaborate as to
how to go about it?

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:17:22 -0500, Barry Watzman wrote:

"But why? My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!"

Because it is broken, only the cracks are not on the surface.

There is NO support by Intuit for anything over about 3 years old. There
are security issues. And once you get more than about 6 years old, you
may not be ABLE to migrate from the old version to a current version.
What I did was do multiple migrations at about 3-year intervals. The
problem is, you have waited so long that you may not be able to find the
necessary intermediate versions. But, more to the point, if you
continue to wait, doing so will get increasingly more difficult. You
will get to a point where you won't be able to migrate and will lose
everything.

I migrated last year from Quicken 98 (non Millennium version) to MyMoney
on FreebSD - no problem!

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On 13/03/2010 00:17, Barry Watzman wrote:
"But why? My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!"

Because it is broken, only the cracks are not on the surface.

There is NO support by Intuit for anything over about 3 years old. There
are security issues. And once you get more than about 6 years old, you
may not be ABLE to migrate from the old version to a current version.

Quicken stopped UK support in 2005.

http://www.quicken.co.uk/

I still use Quicken 98 for invoicing, and I really should get around to
exporting my data to something else...

Need to find round tuits.

--
Adrian C

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Barry Watzman
wrote:
"But why? My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!"

Because it is broken, only the cracks are not on the surface.

There is NO support by Intuit for anything over about 3 years old.
There are security issues. And once you get more than about 6 years
old, you may not be ABLE to migrate from the old version to a current
version.

Sorry, you've lost me!

I've used Quicken 98 for 12 years or so to do the accounts for my own family
and for two voluntary organisations with which I am associated without
requiring any support from Intuit. So why should I need any *now*?

*What* security issues? My use of it never goes anywhere near the internet!
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 12/03/2010 19:52, Barry Watzman wrote:

Also, be certain that the CPU in whatever laptop you are going to get
supports "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is required for running
"XP Mode", and is only supported by about half of current CPUs.

At a guess, AMD virtualization (AMD-V) will also work.

On 12/03/10 22:55, Clive George wrote:
On 12/03/2010 19:52, Barry Watzman wrote:

Also, be certain that the CPU in whatever laptop you are going to get
supports "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is required for running
"XP Mode", and is only supported by about half of current CPUs.

At a guess, AMD virtualization (AMD-V) will also work.

It will.

--
Bernard Peek

Barry Watzman :
Some of your applications are REALLY old. Quicken 98? Really, you
should make upgrading to later versions a bit of a priority.

You seem to be assuming that later versions are better. After several
Quicken "upgrades" that made the product worse rather than better for my
purposes, I stopped upgrading at Quicken 6 (1997, I believe). Nothing
I've seen or read since suggests that I made the wrong decision.

--
Mike Barnes

On Mar 12, 2:52*pm, "Roger Mills" wrote:
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to the
same software and data files at two different locations, and have decided
that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of hardware and
trying to keep them in synch.

Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I *need*
Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on anything else.

Have you tried it in virtual windows on ubuntu? Apps run almost
seamlesly like that - the almost comes from the fact that ubuntu
doesnt seem to create file associations in the win registry, but I've
probably just not yet looked to see how to set it to do so.


My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these.

most windows stuff runs on ubuntu now

I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7..
Is this likely? Is there a solution?

ubuntu?

Would I also need new drivers for all
my USB-based devices?

all built in with ubuntu - even windows 98 doesnt need usb driver
installs if you install the nusb3.1 driver.


Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)
or would I face the same issues as with 7? [One or two
half-way-decent-looking 'refurb' laptops are seemingly still available with
Vista].

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives?

insert ubuntu cd, switch on, and just copy across whatever you want
to. This will copy windows or your data to a thorough extent that
windows itself won't. If win breaks, just copy the image back to the
laptop.


In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS *from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.


I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.


NT

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, NT
wrote:


I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.


Sorry - I accept that it's probably a failing on my part, but I can't get on
with Ubuntu. My current machine dual boots between Ubuntu and Win XP - and I
spent quite a lot of time trying to get to grips with Ubuntu - and failed -
so I never use it now. Even simple things like getting it to accept a fixed
IP address seemed to need a script of some sort to be written, and I just
couldn't be arsed!
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.


Second all that .. try it, you've nowt to loose)...


NT

--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer :


I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.


Second all that .. try it, you've nowt to loose)...

No *money* to lose. I'd place myself firmly in the geek category and
once spent countless hours trying to get Ubuntu to do what I want a PC
to do. Those wasted hours count as a loss to me.

--
Mike Barnes

In article , Mike Barnes
scribeth thus
tony sayer :


I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.


Second all that .. try it, you've nowt to loose)...

No *money* to lose. I'd place myself firmly in the geek category and
once spent countless hours trying to get Ubuntu to do what I want a PC
to do. Those wasted hours count as a loss to me.


Well what couldn't you get it to do?..
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer :
In article , Mike Barnes
scribeth thus
tony sayer :


I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.


Second all that .. try it, you've nowt to loose)...

No *money* to lose. I'd place myself firmly in the geek category and
once spent countless hours trying to get Ubuntu to do what I want a PC
to do. Those wasted hours count as a loss to me.


Well what couldn't you get it to do?..

My log from that time (2006) is only available from backups and I can't
be arsed to restore it so my memory will have to do. I remember that the
Ubuntu equivalents to Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Quicken, Microsoft Office
(particularly with regard to my macros), iTunes, and Turnpike (my
mail/news client) were completely unsatisfactory. There were a few dozen
further applications that I never got round to looking at before I gave
up.

--
Mike Barnes

NT wrote:

I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that.

Let me put in a plug here for Jolicloud. http://www.jolicloud.com/
This is a customised version of Ubuntu, specifically tailored for netbooks (it
seems to work fine on most laptops too). The user interface is very easy to get
used to. I've put it on my Asus eeePC as a boot alternative to XP. One of its
appealing features is the speed of booting and shutdown. Note that it is still
"Pre-Beta", but even at this stage it's pretty impressive.

In
,
NT typed on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:15:30 -0800 (PST):
[...]
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but seriously all these
concerns and many more are non-issues if you try Ubuntu. Linux has a
poor usability reputation, but ubuntu is the distro that's really
changed that. It costs nothing to try, and if for some reason you
still want to get windows you can buy it if and when you find linux
isnt what you want. The days of linux being only for geeks are
history.

NT

You must be easy to please. As I find all flavors of Linux as a very
poor substitute to replace Windows with. I've used Linux for a number of
years. And even Ubuntu is just awful when it comes to playing multimedia
files. As Ubuntu needs three times the processor power just to play the
dang files compared to Windows on the same machine. And support for many
file types are just awful! I actually like my Palm OS far more than I
like Linux. And my favorite version of Linux is Xandros. At least it
actually works, unlike Ubuntu. But it still doesn't work as well as
Windows XP.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 1 of 3 - Windows XP SP2

In message , Roger Mills
writes
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to the
same software and data files at two different locations, and have decided
that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of hardware and
trying to keep them in synch.


Ask me when I phone you when your fan's ready

I have a few pointers



--
geoff

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, geoff
wrote:
In message , Roger Mills
writes
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access
to the same software and data files at two different locations, and
have decided that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two
lots of hardware and trying to keep them in synch.


Ask me when I phone you when your fan's ready

I have a few pointers


Will do. Ta!
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

Is your current laptop at 2GB RAM.
If not can it be upgraded-
#this may solve most of your problems!

Roger Mills wrote:
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to the
same software and data files at two different locations, and have decided
that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of hardware and
trying to keep them in synch.

Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I *need*
Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on anything else.

My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and lots of
essential applications - many of which came free with various PC magazines,
and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop needs to
be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices -
printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with the new
laptop.

Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments
suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, Design CAD
3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work under 7.
Is this likely? Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all
my USB-based devices?

Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to avoid!)
or would I face the same issues as with 7? [One or two
half-way-decent-looking 'refurb' laptops are seemingly still available with
Vista].

How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that
solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I
scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the latest
version.]

Other Issues:
How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have floppy
drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to boot
into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to another
internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the option of
creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it
would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of
Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. Is this
correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from which to
boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks like
I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost!

Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my
particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated.

Roger Mills wrote:
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to the
same software and data files at two different locations, and have decided
that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of hardware and
trying to keep them in synch.

Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I *need*
Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on anything else.

/snip

Don't go Vista. It doesn't do anything that Win7 doesn't do better. XP
was OK, but I think I prefer 7.

Andy

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Roger Mills
wrote:
I'm in the market for a new laptop computer. I need to have access to
the same software and data files at two different locations, and have
decided that a single laptop is preferable to maintaining two lots of
hardware and trying to keep them in synch.

etc.


Many thanks for all the helpful replies so far. The general concensus seems
to be that Vista is to be avoided like the plague, and that some features of
newer laptops - desgined for Vista or Win 7 - may not work with XP. So
buying a Win 7 or Vista machine and downgrading to XP may not be a smart
thing to do.

So it looks like needing to bite the bullet, and go with Windows 7. The
32-bit version appears to be the safer bet.

Which leaves all my legacy software . . Someone suggested using the
Professional versions of Win 7 (expensive!) with the option of running XP
inside it. Others have suggesated using Sun VirtualBox, and running XP in
that. That should apparently run ok in the Home Premium version of Win 7
without explicitly requiring the processor to have virtualisation
capabiliities. Have I got that right? I assume that I would need a lot of
RAM and diskspace to be able to run a virtual machine. Presumably something
with 4GB of RAM (the most supported by the 32-bit version) and 500GB of disk
should do? I'm looking at something like:
http://www.dabs.com/products/acer-as...1.html#reviews
Any comments?

Incidentally, just for a laugh, I decided to download MS's Windows 7
Compatibility Advisor and run it on my current 7-year-old XP laptop to see
what it made of my peripheral devices and installed applications. However, I
can't get it to tell me anything! It loads and starts running - with its
little green bar scrolling across the screen - and displays words to the
effect of "I may be gone some time". Then, after about 2 minutes, it
abruptly closes - and that's that! No report. I've tried to run it several
times - always with the same result. Anyone know what's happening?
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
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checked.

On 16/03/10 22:34, Roger Mills wrote:

Which leaves all my legacy software . . Someone suggested using the
Professional versions of Win 7 (expensive!) with the option of running XP
inside it. Others have suggesated using Sun VirtualBox, and running XP in
that. That should apparently run ok in the Home Premium version of Win 7
without explicitly requiring the processor to have virtualisation
capabiliities. Have I got that right? I assume that I would need a lot of
RAM and diskspace to be able to run a virtual machine. Presumably something
with 4GB of RAM (the most supported by the 32-bit version) and 500GB of disk
should do? I'm looking at something like:
http://www.dabs.com/products/acer-as...1.html#reviews
Any comments?

It doesn't specify but I would expect that machine to come with the
64-bit version of Windows. It will be an OEM license so you won't get
the 32-bit version as well.




--
Bernard Peek

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Bernard Peek
wrote:
On 16/03/10 22:34, Roger Mills wrote:

Which leaves all my legacy software . . Someone suggested using the
Professional versions of Win 7 (expensive!) with the option of
running XP inside it. Others have suggesated using Sun VirtualBox,
and running XP in that. That should apparently run ok in the Home
Premium version of Win 7 without explicitly requiring the processor
to have virtualisation capabiliities. Have I got that right? I
assume that I would need a lot of RAM and diskspace to be able to
run a virtual machine. Presumably something with 4GB of RAM (the
most supported by the 32-bit version) and 500GB of disk should do?
I'm looking at something like:
http://www.dabs.com/products/acer-as...1.html#reviews
Any comments?

It doesn't specify but I would expect that machine to come with the
64-bit version of Windows. It will be an OEM license so you won't get
the 32-bit version as well.


Mmm - you could be right! I had assumed it if it was the 64-bit version it
would say so (most do) - but perhaps not. I shall contact Acer to find out.
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
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checked.

Roger Mills wrote:
Then, after about 2 minutes, it
abruptly closes - and that's that! No report. I've tried to run it several
times - always with the same result. Anyone know what's happening?
C'est microsoft, C'est tout!