Before you begin upgrading, it is worthwhile to visit the support web site for
your laptop manufacturer to look for an available BIOS upgrade intended to
support Windows XP. If you install Windows XP and then later update the
BIOS, you may have to reinstall the operating system to make use of certain
features. Chapter 6 talks about BIOS in depth.
And you should also make certain that any applications you intend to re-
install on the new disk will work with Windows XP; not all work properly and
some refuse to work at all. Microsoft offers a software download that you can
run to gauge your machine’s capabilities and check installed applications
against an official list of programs known to work properly with XP. To obtain
the program, go to http://www.microsoft.com and search to find the Windows XP
Upgrade Advisor. You can also go to another Microsoft web page to search
the Windows Catalog for each of the applications you intend to install. Look
for the catalog at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/upgrading/compat.
mspx or use the search bar at http://www.microsoft.com.
Making a fresh start or a great migration........................................
My trusty old Gateway Solo 2500 SE laptop’s 4GB hard drive had become way
too small for its current use. The machine was perfectly acceptable as an
extension of my writing desk: Running Windows 98SE and Microsoft’s Office
suite, I could work in Microsoft Word and Excel and surf the net using
Internet Explorer 6.0 at speeds little different from the machine on my desk-
top. Over the years I had adapted the machine with more RAM and had
added a WiFi PC Card and USB Ethernet interface, which permitted me to
connect to the Internet in most situations. (More on PC Cards and USB in
Chapter 16, if you’re interested.)
In addition to the operating system and Microsoft Office applications, I also ran
Norton SystemWorks for maintenance and antivirus protection. Also on the
drive were Adobe Photoshop and the ACDSee image database system. I kept a
copy of AOL 9.0 as a backup Internet access route; it could be asked to use a
dial-up modem (installed in a PC Card slot or as a USB device) and could also
jump into the fray once a broadband or WiFi connection had been established.
All told, about 1.5GB of my available 4GB was occupied before I added any
data to the system. For a quick trip down to a research library or a weekend
writing jaunt, that represented more than enough room.
But I also had come to depend on the laptop as the traveling repository for
digital photographs taken with my 5MP camera. The basic format for images
from that camera, at highest resolution, results in files of about 3.5MB for
each picture in the compressed JPEG format and as much as 15MB for pic-
tures shot at highest resolution and stored as a TIFF. If I resize an image for
Chapter 17: Installing a New Operating System or Migrating Upwards ..................
