Best OS for laptops

[tYteaZzAzN]

Best OS for laptops?

*best defined as most reliable, fastest performing, etc :D

Windows 2000 apparently works the best with my POS laptop. I'm surprised :)

[BloodRed]

Windows XP, hands down. The boot and wake up times are very fast, which saves a lot of waiting when you're using your system on the go. It's stable, secure, and works very well on a laptop.

[SkyDog]

I'll second BloodRed. Windows XP also has better built-in driver support for laptops and its power management features are a bit more mature, too.

[anfpunk]

Debian works great on my laptop.

[ua549]

XP has inbuilt control of the Intel Speedstep interface. Win2k requires a separate utility to interact with Speedstep.

[GeForce]

Windows 2000! Eat's the least reasources while gives the best stablility and security!

[muisejt]

I'll have to say XP, I like the option to have 2 network settings for the NIC, I have DHCP set as the main one for when I'm at work and a static set for when I go home. of course a couple batch files with NETSH works too but I like just not having to run a batch file

[KegCanMan]

Win XP...although i notice slower load times.....but only by about 10seconds....which i can deal with. Cant beat the driver support.....but i have huge stability problems with it...that may be fixed with a fresh format and install.

[ua549]

I never reload the OS on my notebook. I have the power setting so that when I close the lid, the notebook hibernates. When I turn on the power again the OS and applications start right from where they were when I hibernated. No rebooting, very fast - simply reload memory from disk.

[Frostburn]

Make sure you reboot occasionally. I'm sure there are still memory leaks floating about, and they will add up eventually.

[medunaweb]

but is it winXP home or pro. ? I personally like pro. better because i am big into networking a ton of computers and what not (Cisco freak here):)

[ua549]

Originally posted by Frostburn
Make sure you reboot occasionally. I'm sure there are still memory leaks floating about, and they will add up eventually. I've not run into a memory leak in many years. Not since Windows 3x (never run 9x). I typically boot once or twice a year for kernal patches.

[Royal Oaks]

I voted XP as well. The boot time is awesome, and with Cleartype enabled, the beauty of LCD screens really shines. I am thinking about trying 2000 on there though, just to give it another shot. I run 2000 on my main rig and am very pleased with it.

[tYteaZzAzN]

Originally posted by Royal Oaks
I voted XP as well. The boot time is awesome, and with Cleartype enabled, the beauty of LCD screens really shines. I am thinking about trying 2000 on there though, just to give it another shot. I run 2000 on my main rig and am very pleased with it.
try out win2k again...i'm sure you'll be very impressed with its speed ;) The time it takes for XP to open up an application as opposed to the time win2k takes is significantly higher by tens of seconds. My laptop specs aren't even close to what the recommended specs are for running XP, but with win2k i feel as if my 64mb of sdram is really being put to use :D

[ua549]

Originally posted by tYteaZzAzN

try out win2k again...i'm sure you'll be very impressed with its speed ;) The time it takes for XP to open up an application as opposed to the time win2k takes is significantly higher by tens of seconds. My laptop specs aren't even close to what the recommended specs are for running XP, but with win2k i feel as if my 64mb of sdram is really being put to use :D With the meager amount of memory you have, I'm surprised you like the speed of Win2k. You are most likely using the page file frequently. That significantly slows performance.

My WinXP notebook keeps up with my Win2k Server desktop as far as opening apps, etc. Both boxes are similar in terms of proc speed (2GHz) and memory (512MB). The XP box is a notebook so it has a much slower disk drive (5.4k rpm IDE) than the desktop (15k rpm SCSI). With adequate system resources WinXP is actually faster than Win2k because of kernal mode code improvements.

[benneke]

for a laptop it is the best to use a NT-based OS (securing your files)
on my p133 laptop i got WinNT4.0

but if i bought a laptop it has WinXP pro on it from the start

[KommisMar]

My brother recently got a loaner laptop from a local college (where our father works in the IT department). It's a no-name machine, didn't come with any driver disks. I was faced with two choices - let my brother use someone else's Windows installation which was severely slow and corrupted (It looked to be formerly a Win98 machine, which had WinXP Pro instaled on top. The HDD was then converted to NTFS, and the computer was configured to run as a Novell client... talk about janky!), or bite the bullet, reformat to FAT32 and repartition, and install WinXP Pro from scratch.

I won't let my brother use a janky computer, so I installed XP Pro from scratch. It was completely painless. XP detected every piece of janky hardware on that computer. :)

The machine runs about as well as you could expect a 700MHz mobile PIII to, and it has had no problems whatsoever. It's as stable as my desktop. So, based on that, I'd recommend XP.

[Mithrandir3017]

With the freedom of a laptop, you need the freedom of Linux.

[medunaweb]

Originally posted by KommisMar
My brother recently got a loaner laptop from a local college (where our father works in the IT department). It's a no-name machine, didn't come with any driver disks. I was faced with two choices - let my brother use someone else's Windows installation which was severely slow and corrupted (It looked to be formerly a Win98 machine, which had WinXP Pro instaled on top. The HDD was then converted to NTFS, and the computer was configured to run as a Novell client... talk about janky!), or bite the bullet, reformat to FAT32 and repartition, and install WinXP Pro from scratch.

I won't let my brother use a janky computer, so I installed XP Pro from scratch. It was completely painless. XP detected every piece of janky hardware on that computer. :)

The machine runs about as well as you could expect a 700MHz mobile PIII to, and it has had no problems whatsoever. It's as stable as my desktop. So, based on that, I'd recommend XP.

why did you format it back to FAT32? why didn't you just format as NTFS and then install winXP PRO from scratch. NTFS is much more stable.

I still think linux is one of the best OS out there. If you spend the time to learn how to use it properly.

[KommisMar]

I see no reason for someone who knows very little about computers to use NTFS. I'm also not sure if that's what I'd pick for someone who is primarily a gamer. I don't even use NTFS myself.

[gateways_rule]

I also voted Windows XP. It boots the fastest and IMHO, it's the most reliable. :)

[SkyDog]

Originally posted by KommisMar
I see no reason for someone who knows very little about computers to use NTFS.

It's much more robust & reliable than FAT32. You're much less likely to lose data if something goes wrong, and even someone who doesn't know squat about computers has to like that. ;)

On top of that, it's more secure, which can come in handy on a laptop. And if you've got a large hard drive, it's much more efficient in handling that space because of FAT32's large cluster size on large partitions.

[coolqf]

Originally posted by SkyDog


It's much more robust & reliable than FAT32. You're much less likely to lose data if something goes wrong, and even someone who doesn't know squat about computers has to like that. ;)

On top of that, it's more secure, which can come in handy on a laptop. And if you've got a large hard drive, it's much more efficient in handling that space because of FAT32's large cluster size on large partitions.

I wont argue that NTFS is better, but I hear way too much' it's much more secure, robust, reliable and...' etc... I remember reading a few times on the advantages of NTFS, but I have to say, to me they're both the same as for speed and comfortability. NTFS is probably better than FAT32, but I think it's just a bit better, and if you don't have it you're not really missing out (considering mainly the average home user)

[PCTORQUE]

Though XP uses more resources, XP can do more with them. I've seen the more consistent benchmarks with XP. I love 2K, but sometimes there are touchpad and input device conflictions with it even with SP3.

[Pinksta]

I would use Linux! I personally recomend Debian 3.0. Also if I were you I would use Fluxbox and NOT Gnome or KDE. WinXP is too bloated for me, plus it is a M$ OS :eek:

[speed freak]

Originally posted by ua549
I never reload the OS on my notebook. I have the power setting so that when I close the lid, the notebook hibernates. When I turn on the power again the OS and applications start right from where they were when I hibernated. No rebooting, very fast - simply reload memory from disk.

Nice setup, that's how my grandfather has it, you must be a fairly old guy ;) :p jk, jk

ok, yeah yeah, it's a good idea though. I prefer XP for lappies ;) , BUT, I like 2000 more.

[df]

apparently XP with its inbuilt speedstep technology for P-4M, is buggy on p4m >= 2.0 ghz.

lot of laptop makers are having probs on lappies running XP with p4m >=2ghz, they step down to 1.2 and will often not stay a t full speed.

dell + toshiba forums are littered with posts about this.

win2k + intel speedstep app works fine tho! so its obviously an XP bug...

[SaturnBeat]

I think that XP is the best program, actually ever made! It has everything I need, and it has all those new things! Hehe, I love it:D

[coolqf]

WinXP IF tweaked for maximal battery longitivity.
If not tweaked, then Win2k.
Win9x family does eats the battery a lot quicker...

[tu2thepoo]

Originally posted by coolqf
NTFS is probably better than FAT32, but I think it's just a bit better,
well, i haven't had to run scandisk once since converting to NTFS (well, let me restate that - i've run it a few times but it's never found any disk errors), that's the biggest plus for me.

plus, unless you're running in disaster-recovery-oh-my-god-the-OS-has-screwed-the-pooch mode, NTFS is more or less transparent to the enduser.

[T4c0]

MAC OS X owns u all
:)
gg