World: r3wp

There is many issues when you do that.

Appart from what Reichart said, there is also SID and other things 
like that.

But

If you can, I recommand to ghost your disk to another one (as an 
image),

then, use the SYSPREP command to prepare your Windows system to be 
ghost,
then, ghost it to your Laptop HD.

SYSPREP can be found on your Win XP CD. I don't have one with me 
right now, so I can't say where it is exactly.

Thanks Reichart and DideC. I'm shopping for a laptop now. Once I 
buy it, I'll probably be back for more help.

You should, we can talk to you about how to configure your drive 
in the first place.  I have some simple tricks I do for my laptops 
(I only use laptops, and live on them). 

Quick list:

Put everything in PGP folders.

Install XP to a small partition, and have a ghosted version on the 
same drive (seperate partition).

Basic layout is C: = Boot and XP, D: = Data (your personal Data, 
E: = Extra applications, Z: = Archive og Ghost of C:.
Keep the custom Ghost CD for your laptop with you.


With this, if somoene steals your computer they don't get your data.
If C gets corrupted, you can recover.
And, it is REALLY easy to back up just your data fast.

I'll definitely try to get back for more detail, Reichart.

The the laptop I have been eyeing:


http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/index.php?section=specs&model_id=1054


But it is too expensive for me. Does anyone know of a similar one 
at a cheaper price?  Or perhaps someone knows that  this would not 
be a good choice anyway. I'm open for suggestions. I just need a 
big, high resolution screen, large harddrive, and lots of speed. 
I'm not particularly worried about weight.

Wow...I don't track laptops the same way.  I'm on this right now 
http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=P7120D
Very small, but I LOVE it!

I also own an Apple Powerbook (still learning it).  And I have a 
great Toshiba.  I alos REALLY love both Toshiba and Fujitsu's tech 
support, and is worth giving up some cool feature from another copany 
in exchange for the support.

my kind of machine, I have a small ibm thinkpad, and wouldn't trade 
it for a bigger more powefull one... only thing I regret, is not 
having internal CD support... although I don't really need it... 
you can't do everything with a memory stick!

Yeah this little guy has a cool removable CD drive, 7-9 hours of 
batery life. kicks ass.

Louis, I don't think you are taking the issue of drivers seriously 
enough. Most laptops come with a lot of extra drivers and utilities 
to make the power management, keyboard, wireless and other custom 
hardware work. Many manufacturers only make these drivers and utilities 
available from a system restore disk, and their hardware doesn't 
work properly unless you install their custom version of Windows.


Avoid manufacturers like Sony if you want to reinstall Windows, or 
it won't work.

same for IBM (lenovo) my pet peeve about my system... although it 
boots damn fast.

installing it was NOT trivial.

Check the manufacturer's web site before you but the laptop. If you 
can download all necessary drivers and utilities from their web site 
you might be in luck. Make sure that all bundled applications have 
installers included with the laptop, rather than restore disks. Before 
you wipe the laptop, check it for install directories and archive 
them - and run test installs on another computer to make sure the 
installers work.

but -> buy

When I but a laptop (or any computer) the first thing I do is image 
the original drive, before I even boot up the computer for the first 
time. That way I can undo any mistakes I make, and even restore the 
computer to pristine condition and return it if that is necessary.

I usually image the drive by booting a live CD that has imaging sotware 
with networking support.

There are many DOS and Windows-based live CDs that will do. I even 
hear that there are some Linux live CDs...

just use Norton Ghost or some other tool ....

I do use Norton Ghost (or TrueImage) - that's the DOS-based tool 
I was talking about.

I find Acronis better than Norton Ghost.

I should mention, I hate Norton Ghost, but I had spent the time to 
learn it, and it supported all the diff CD drives.  The next time 
I change laptops, I will check out something else. Since Graham mentions 
Acronis, I would probably try that.


What I don''t like about Norton is the crappy 1984 DOS interface. 
 It is confusing, and has menus where a simple single page would 
work better.

You might say it has menu-itis.

You could download a 30 day trial of Acronis True Image Server.

Really nice:


http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/toshibadirect.to?page=ces06_hddvd&seg=HHO

But 10.1 lbs.

Expensive too.

I strongly suggest getting a Toshiba over other makers.  I will never 
buy DELL every again.  They wasted too much of my time, and time 
is one thing I can't afford.  Toshiba tries to help with anything 
they can.  Thier tech support often speak several languages, are 
very pateint, and well informed.

Yes, my son has really been burned by Dell also.

I met the head of developement for the Qosmio line.  That line repaced 
my Toshiba.  His goal was to build the best laptop out there.

I was one of many people that told him that the specific model of 
Toshiba I had was the best laptop on the market. I bought it two 
years ago, it has 1600x1200, 2 GIGs, 2 Ghz, 80gig HD, 2Kx1K extrernal 
video, and the best sound system on the market.  So good in fact 
it works as a whole room audio system!  The Qosmio has the same system, 
althogh the packaging is a little diff, and I have not heard it personally.

The best laptop it the world should have raid 1

DELL are not innovators .. they just ship cheaply, and other manufacturers 
who do innovate are learning to bring their pricing down.

Do rebol programmers get a 50% discount on Toshiba computers?

Qosmio G35-AV650 will do raid 1.

Reichart : Put everything in PGP folders.

an alternative that I use.. is TrueCrypt.
http://www.truecrypt.org/

Are there any advantages of one over the other?  I have only used 
PGP.  What I like is:


I can create a file (x.pgp) of any size, then mount it as a drive. 
 This allows me to do things like make a file that is the size of 
a DVD disk, and if I need to burn it I just copy the folder to the 
DVD drive.  Although, since Qtask exists, I stopped burning CDs and 
DVDs, since my data is safer on Qtask.

In fact, since this topic is Hardware, I should mention that I have 
heavily cut down my need of harddrives.  Part of why I used to have 
lots of mediums was that I needed back ups.  But every drive on Qtask 
is a) Raid 5, b) Mirrored, and then c) soon will be mirrrored again 
and again as more servers come on line world wide.  So the safest 
place to shove my data is onto the web.

Strange - our company buy IBMs and now part of our company switched 
to Dell, no problems so far - they exchange your notebook next working 
day for little price addition ...

HP Pavilion dv8280us is almost the same as the Toshiba but $1,000.00 
cheaper.  What are your experiences with HP notebooks?

I think that every hw can potentially fail. I know IBMs for 8 years, 
I have one Dell for 6 year, and I have Acer for 2.5 years .... some 
failed, some don't, but all are good machines - tools ;-)

As for HP, I just had oportunity to buy 2 of them, for our management, 
- they work ...

and - I don't buy the crap that you can tell, who the person is, 
judging for his notebook. Acer does 30% market in CZ, it works, and 
display is crystal sharp here, while whole one line of Dell's (14") 
has crappy display yellow/red cast to letters etc.

Problem with laptops is not only the Hardware (that can fails). 

What I dislike with them is the f*cking number of software addons 
they need to start to handle the hardware. Remember Carl's blog on 
that !!

you don't need that sw imo ... and I uninstall most. IBM has thre 
part of Tivoli (maybe, not sure), you simply can have image file 
somewhere, then booting, pressing F12, password, and you can unpack 
your image when you reinstall ...

(that's with IBM PCs, not sure about notebooks)

I have an HP I got a while back (had to, for a gig; I hate laptops); 
it's worked fine, but I don't mess with things on it much, so it 
should. :-)

Only thing is that it's really heavy. Knowing what I know now, I'd 
probably try to go the way Reichart has--as small as possible--and 
just plug into a keyboard and monitor where I go.

Pekr, that is not true ($1000 diff).  You must be comparing Toshiba's 
list price from the site to HP's street price.  It more like a hundred 
bucks.


But...I agree the HP specs are much better.    Finding the right 
laptop is a lot of work.