Xp laptops have been with us for at least 10 years, however the market didn’t look anything like the one today. When Microsoft released their new operating system the most powerful processor available was about the Pentium 3 at 500Mhz and now there are 2-4 core processors running at 3000 MHz on the market and memory costs a little portion of what it used to in 2000. They are also 20 times as fast.
Windows XP is a really scalable system as it took every change in the computer industry without many problems, but 10 years of patching and tailoring, tinkering left its mark on the code. Almost everything XP now does as default came in either a form of a patch or a service pack. For instance, did you know that first version of windows xp couldn’t address more than 128GB on a hard disk? I had an unpleasant experience with that on a LAN party. My system collapsed for some reason and the only XP install disk I had was without service pack. I installed it and when I started to put my data back, including my bigger files it tipped over 128GB on my 160GB disk and windows started to rewrite the disk from the start causing it to crash and be unable to boot again. It took me 3 rounds to realize the cause of the problem.
The market of XP laptops is shrinking fast, with the new kid, Windows 7, around nobody really wants to go back to the old days of problems with power management and security. Windows Vista almost jinxed the shifting out of XP, but Windows 7 came just in time to save the situation. With its lower memory consumption more processor friendly central code it basically blows vista out of the water, and gives XP a run for its money.
There are a few notebooks that are fine with running XP and don’t really want to go Windows 7 just yet. These are the netbooks and they don’t really have what it takes to run the full version of 7. With integrated graphic cards Aero Glass looks a bit chunky although runs smoothly. These little notebook computers bring the best out of XP as they rarely have more than 1GB memory and while Windows 7 is really great at utilizing memory, it’s still the element of XP.
If you take a look around you can see laptops sold with XP, but I wouldn’t wait until Christmas to get one because 7 is expected to take it’s well deserved throne by then.
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