I am having a lot of trouble with my Dell latitude D630 and I am looking into an alternative. I want a new laptop, where I can get a good warranty (preferably on site) and it would be awesome if it had XP or could easily be downgraded to XP. I honestly do not care about screen size or anything, preferably just a different company other than Dell that has reliable laptops. I also have a budget of about $1200-1500 roughly. Thanks! Any advice is appreciated.
I know you said no Dell, but they do offer new notebooks with XP. I bought a Vostro 1500 with XP that I am very happy with. I also have on site service, and telephone support is in North America not India.
I’d recommend a Macbook (which you can easily configure to dual-boot to XP and OS X), except that I don’t believe that Apple offers onsite support for notebook systems. But if there’s an Apple store nearby, perhaps that would work for you. Or you might look at the computers from Lenovo. And as Rick mentioned, you can get onsite support from Dell, if the warranty you purchased includes it.
Looking for advice? Opinions? Shared experiences? IMHO. Moved.
samclem GQ moderator
I’m dual-booting Windows XP on my MacBook Pro, and I find that the computer runs a lot hotter under XP that it does under Mac OS X.
I’m not sure why; Mac OS X seems to have better control of the machine’s fans. This is surprising because I loaded the hardware drivers that Apple supplies on the Mac OS X 10.5 disc into XP and XP should have as good control of the hardware.
This does NOT occur if I boot XP in a VMWare virtual machine.
You can get virtually any laptop and format/install XP on it. Your budget could get a very nice computer. What kind of stuff are you doing on the laptop? Business work, gaming, or simply getting your SDMB fix? Lenovo, HP, and many others make quality products.