Whoo, I have a new laptop...

[jtroye32]

I just want to insert something here.

If you bought a laptop, and it _did_ come with reinstallation cd's, then I would recommend installing that over your _ligit_ copy of windows.

Reason: Native hardware support. aka Drivers.
You can ignore my advice if you can find the right drivers your self.

Unless you just upgrade. imo, if your hp computer doesn't come with proprietary hardware, reinstall that shit. same goes with sony and any other computer that comes preinstalled with spyware.

edit-I found a tablet pc edition release floating around the interwebs. hint: ETH0

just get winxp pro and download all the drivers from the manufacturer's website. xp pro is the way to go right now. vista is too new and you'll probably just have problems if you actually use your computer/laptop to do stuff other than say, word processing or surfing the series of tubes (internets). i was going to upgrade to vista, but then i read about the incompatibilities and security issues it has right now and decided to wait.

you can find xp pro floating around the interwebs too. hint: ?

 

[Harsky]

The thing is, when I went to the official site to get the drivers

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwar...product=3185028

The section for the XP version is pretty much bare. Then again, I wonder what would happen if I installed the drivers made for the vista in the XP version...

 

[zombgief]

That said, I'm worried that when I format it and install XP, it will lose some of the software that allows the touchscreen aspect of it to be used. Also, I think that this laptop is really the latest thing and no UK keyboards are out for it yet. I guess I could just get a couple of stickers and write it down and stick it on the keyboard... but it's going to be hard to configure browsing habits since I have to use the college computers.

I was issued one of these: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_ki...c1100screen.jpg several years ago for use on a project... and the first thing I did was reinstall the OS to clear out the pre-installed crap.

For XP, I believe all you need to do is make sure you're installing a "Tablet PC Edition" of Windows XP (which is what came with the HP I used) and the tablet features will be there!


-=edit=-

And yeah, make sure to get the drivers from HP's website and have them handy after you reinstall XP or XP Tablet Edition. And if they really don't have the drivers on their site there are utilities out there that can build a database of the drivers you have installed. So you could have something like that profile your machine with the original pre-installed OS and drivers, and then reinstall the OS and use the newly-created driver database to install your device drivers.

 

[Harsky]

Wow, it's not going well with my new laptop. I put the XP Tablet PC version on it and somehow it runs quite slow. Now I might as well get the Vista version because NONE of the drivers like the sound/graphics work...