Hi
I hope you can offer me some advise on how to use a dual booted laptop. I've purchased an Acer Aspire 6930 which has Vista (think it's the home edition) but as this is a business machine and I am currently running XP Pro on my other laptop I decided to have XP installed and now have it dual booting. Now I've come to the point of installing programs back on it I'm not sure how it works using the two together. I understand that I have the choice of which OS system to use when it boots up but if I've installed the accounts package and Office 2003 in XP and have them open can I then open something I've installed in Vista such as our online scheduling system? I don't want to find that I'm having to log off and change systems all the time - if this is the case I will just install everything in XP. I would really have preferred an XP system but couldn't find one. I'm completely new to Vista and am unsure whether some of the applications I use will work.
Any advise would be appreciated.
Thanks
Willow
Hi Willow,
Looking at the date you added the query its likely that you have already gone ahead and done something, but if you are stil in the same position let me tell all.
In order to dual boot you need to have the hard drive partitioned, this will give a drive for each operating system. However unless you get something like partition magic you will have to reinstall from scratch and on the start of the installation you can define the partitions. Downside is that you will have to restart the laptop in order to change OS
You could use Virtual PC, but it will depend on your vista level and I don't think its supported under basic. If you can install VPC 2007 (its free) you can then have XP within vista, however since you have a laptop with vista home, then its likely that this is a sub £400 laptop so its not going to have much power to drive 2 systems at the same time.
You may want to consider just going back to XP.
While you can't buy an XP machine directly, you can get a PC / Laptop with Vista Business and that will have downgrade rights. we only buy in these and are proud to say that we have not yet shipped a single 'vista running' machine to anyone.
Tez
The short answer is that if you dual boot you will have to install all your software twice and you need to confirm that your software licenses will allow this. Some packages do not.
Onto the second part - Tez, why are you "proud" to have never shipped a Vista machine? Even my mother-in-law is enjoys Vista more than she did XP? I appreciate that without Service Pack 1 it was a slow thing, but miles more secure and UAC gives confidence of who is in control.
just curious!
ttfn
David (still working hard reviewing people's comments in the book).
David,
Its a step in the wrong direction. everything is counter productive and hard to navigate around. People work in a way that have been doing for many years and suddenly what used to work efficiently now has people thinking, for example, the classic start menu. Im sure people complain that the classic view was pants but when im running Vista, im having to look down the list for say autoroute or virtual PC, its buried with the rest of the 'Microsoft <whatever>' or Windows <whatever>. its hard to find what your looking for and you have to keep clicking on program folders to open it. Under XP it would expand for you.
Explorer, under XP, you want to go from the current folder to say the C:\ drive? no problem, click on the right hand arrow and see your list of drives / folders to go. now all I see is websites unde vista, or the other side only takes me into a limited choices.
Want to see the status of the network card? XP, right click on the toolbar icon, left click on status. Vista, right click on the network icon, then go to network center, then you can go to status.
Everything needs more clicks
UAC is easy to turn off and when I have been out on breakfix calls, I have 'under request' turned off the UAC.
Without disrespecting your Mother in Law, she's probably doesn't use her computer in the same way as business people. These people need to get things does quickly, efficiently and in a way that it familiar. Jeez, don't even mention the ribbons in Office, I have clients gone to OpenOffice because the toolbars have gone.
So, yes, im proud to not sell a Vista machine knowing that my clients at least don't have to put up with having to relearn something thats been around since 3.1 / 95
If MS do decide to permanently drop classic folders in windows 7, then I think they will lose even more customers in the future. Vista should have given them a warning, 7 will confirm it - people don't like change when its unneccessary.
ps, 64bit blue screens more than it ever did on XP - and I do have certified 64 drivers.
(c)David Overton 2006-23