Windows/Jaunty Dual Boot on Notebook Computer

[Andrew Farris]

On Mon, 2009-09-07 at 15:12 -0500, John Graddy wrote:
> I am considering buying a notebook system.  All of them seem to come
> with some flavor of Vista pre-loaded.  I am mainly interested in putting
> Jaunty on the system, but would like to keep Vista on it until I am
> comfortable that Jaunty will run on the hardware that I purchase.

My advice on this one: do a little research before you buy to see what
laptops work well with ubuntu. I took a liveCD to Best Buy last time I
needed a new laptop, and they were perfectly happy to let me try it out
on a few of the laptops that I was interested, after I assured them that
the liveCD wouldn't hurt anything (it may have helped that one of the
ppl working at the time was familiar with LiveCDs and how they work).
Just try it, until you find one that looks like it will work good.

A good alternative, if you dont actually want/need windows at all is to
go with a system76 PC http://www.system76.com/. All they sell us
Ubuntu-based PCs, and as such they are guaranteed to work flawlessly
with Ubuntu (as they have Ubuntu pre-loaded).  I would've bought my last
laptop from there, but I needed one immediately, and couldn't afford to
wait for shipping.

> I have been reading a lot of horror stories about trying to create a
> dual-boot system with Vista.  Some folks say it's a piece of cake, that
> they just installed from the live CD and everything worked fine.  Others
> tell of being able to boot either Vista or Jaunty, but not both.  I have
> read about Easy BCD and Virtualbox.  I have also read some (seemingly)
> endless threads about continued frustration.
> 
> Does anyone have some words of wisdom - other that just junk vista?

Just junk Vista :)

But seriously, a little research can go a long way. Some PCs cooperate
well with Vista, some don't.  One other alternative, if you're hellbent
on having both in some sort of dual-boot, you could install jaunty as a
Wubi install until you're satisfied that the hardware works like you
expect, then re-partition, and do a regular dual-boot.  My personal
advice though, is to carefully evaluate what you need to do with the
laptop, and decide whether Ubuntu will be able to fulfill 100% of your
needs on it's own, or if you will actually need Vista. If Ubuntu will
satisfy all your needs, I'd suggest getting a System76 notebook, and
save yourself the hassle of trying to wrangle Vista to do what you want.

> Thanks in advance.
> 
> P.S. Almost all of the notebooks advertise that they support Wirelwss B
> and/or G.  Will these run on my wireless N home network?

they should work just fine. Wireless N is supposed to be backwards
compatible with at least G.

Hope that helps.


-- 
Andrew
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