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Re: Try doing this with Windows

Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Mart van de Wege wrote:
> 
>> So my old laptop died, an HP Omnibook 6100.
>> 
>> Since I really liked the model, with it's high-resolution
>> screen, I went looking for a replacement. Alas, the only
>> 6100s I could find on the 2nd hand market were the
>> 1024x768 versions. 
>> 
>> Then I found a 6200. It had the 1400x1050 screen I wanted,
>> and a short look at the hardware properties dialog showed
>> that it should be able to run Linux well. I bought it and
>> took it home. 
>> 
>> Then the fun started. I took out the HD of my old 6100,
>> and transplanted it. Now, that HD contained a custom-built
>> kernel, so I was crossing my fingers on bootup.
>> 
>> Waddayaknow, it booted straight up to my gdm login, no
>> problems at all.
>> 
>> A short stock taking showed the following things not
>> working: 
>> 
>> - Sound.
>> - Infrared.
>> - IDE only ran in PIO mode.
>> 
>> Otherwise, fully functional. Had I used a standard Debian
>> kernel image, all would have worked.
>> 
>> Try that on Windows. Booting on a completely different
>> CPU/Motherboard will give you Safe Mode only at best, and
>> a blue screen at worst. 
>> 
>> After the kernel compile, the only things that do not work
>> are suspend/hibernate; ACPI does not reset the console
>> properly, but this appears to be a BIOS problem, so I
>> suspect Windows wouldn't fare well 
> 
> You cannot /legally/ do this with Windows. The licence are
> sold per motherboard, so even if your previous computer
> died and you hauled the old hard-drive, you must purchase a
> new licence (GBP 65 for XP Home Edition, GBP 135 for Pro,
> at least in the UK). WGA can probably lock up your system 
> because it probes the hardware to confirm it was not
> changed. WGA is Microsoft's last suicide attempt.

Priced out using http://www.officemax.com: $200 US for XP
Home Ed, $70 US for Norton Internet Security 2006, $400 US
for Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition.  That is $670 US
total (£362.00 GBP).  If antivirus, personal firewall and
Office were already there, cost would be only for XP. 

However, I have been able to make use of Open Office 2.0 on
my Dell laptop to read Microsoft Word and Excel spreadsheet
files.  Depending on one's use, OO makes for a good
alternative. 

When I was with the health service, I did a presentation on
building automation system development on a venerable 386
laptop using WordPerfect's presentation manager instead of
PowerPoint.

Unless employer has an absolute requirement for specific
software, there are less costly alternatives that work
perfectly well, including Linux and Open Source. 

--
HPT

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