> I've been reading this thread and it seems like may of the people on this list are still stuck in the 1980s when it comes to knowledge of x86 laptops. :-)
Anyway, with regards laptops... They work well these days.. they're not as flaky as the original 80286 Toshibas and you can read the screen, even in daylight! Dual booting Linux and Windows is not a problem anymore, other than Windows will fight to put its boot sector on a drive and wipe out any others. Of course, why would you want any OS other than Windows?! Now, as for options to run old QL-derivative emulators on old versions of Windows on modern laptops you have a few options: (1) Try to install old Windows on a modern laptop. Unless the laptop is available with Windows XP on it forget it. You won't find drivers for most of the modern hardware. Also, if the machine has a SATA hard disk interface you'll need a driver on a floppy disk just so that you can install Windows XP. (2) Run a DOS emulator for really old machines. This is an option if you have Windows XP but I don't know of any which run correctly under Windows Vista (which you should avoid 'cos it's too buggy anyway) and even fewer will run under 64bit Vista. You can dual boot with Linux. This is not a difficult thing to do and distributions such as Mandriva have utilities within the install process which will allow you to resize your Windows partition without losing data. The main problem is that WiFi drivers under Linux are hit as miss due to the manufacturers not releasing the programming specifications. Other than this Linux emulators or virtual machines (e.g. the free VMware Server) make this attractive. (3) Run MSDOS or Windows in a virtual machine. Again, this might cause a problem with drivers if you're running Linux. Alternatively, you can buy VMware workstation for Windows. There is another alternative, you could buy an Apple laptop (which spec for spec actually are cheaper than other Windows machines) and either dual boot (Bootcamp) with Windows and/or buy either Parallels or VMware Fusion and run under that. It also has the advantage that MacOS X is a true BSD Unix descendant and is pretty hardy when it comes to being attacked by crackers on the 'net. Hm.. I wonder... I've just had an idea, I wonder if I can compile UQLX under MacOS (using the supplied SDK and X server) and have a nice little QL in a window. :-) Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be. _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
