Just bought a new HP laptop for a great price, $998 after a $500 online coupon discount, and it's great. But it comes with tons of bloatware which I want to lose. It has 2, 120GB 7200RPM hard drives and I'd like to maybe install Vista Home Premium, which it came with, on one, and XP Pro SP3 on the other and be able to dual boot it. I did a little research on this today and it seems pretty complicated due to the change in the way Windows boots now under Vista. Also I do a lot of graphics work and am wondering about the possibility of running OSX off of this. I know you can run XP off of a MAC but wasn't sure if you can run OSX off of a PC. Any thoughts on this? Anyone here that's doing this? Any links to helpful sites, tutorials, etc? I did download EasyBCD which I hear is helpful. Thanks guys. Here's the system: HP Pavilion dv9700t customizable Notebook PC ------------------------------------------------- * Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit) * Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.20 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB) * 17.0" WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050) * 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) * 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS * HP Imprint Finish (Radiance) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone!! * Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and BluetoothTM!! * 240GB 7200RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (120GB x 2) * LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support * No TV Tuner w/remote control * High Capacity 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery * Microsoft(R) Works 9.0 __________________ We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time - T.S. Eliot -
Windows is a warm open OS compared to the MAC world. MAC is all about proprietary and the extra margin you can get for that. Does that answer the question? On dual boot: google it, I recall quite a bit of material on it (although I think its much easier if XP is the primary and I suspect you'll put both OS's on one of the disks (put your data files and swap files on the other one for better performance)).
Theoretically, installing OS X on a pc is possible, however, you will never get it to work. I've also heard that it is illegal. You will have to dual boot with some other Unix/Linux based operating system like Ubuntu. Also, installing XP on a Vista machine is a pain in the ass because all the hardware is configured for Vista. It can be done, (i've done it about half a dozen times), but finding all the drivers is a lengthy process.
well hang on a sec... http://www.osx86project.org/ http://www.maconpc.org/index.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSx86 <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tcs03Glds-8&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tcs03Glds-8&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
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there are a ton of these on youtube. i laughed at this guy a lot... <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/41Z0FJYBd5U&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/41Z0FJYBd5U&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
Yeah it's great. http://www.bensbargains.net is the best place to look for this coupon and many others. You need to keep looking and when you see it go for it immediately as they sometimes only last a few days. Good luck. Also http://www.notebookreview.com is a great site to learn more about notebooks. Lots of knowledgeable gamers hang there.
Actually I was going to put XP on one and Vista on the other. But I think you may be right. One thing though is Vista has a different booting order and mode than XP so it's not that easy. And right now I may just install XP Pro SP3 on the empty one and remove the other for now. I just need to be able to trade and with the Vista bloatware one I can only load one index or commodity futures chart out of TWS. Pathetic!