Ibm Thinkpad & WinXP?

Win XP would run slow at first on that computer but with some tweaking, you could getting it running fairly decently.(edit for windows 2K: It should run decently but I have NEVER used it so I really wouldnt know) If you are still unsure which operating system to go with, consider multibooting.

While it can be done on 1 partition it isnt recommended and will require some file modification.

 

OpenOffice.org is capable of saving its documents in either its own native format or in MS Office format. It's easy to convert documents back and forth, simple as "Save As...". So yes, sharing files between Windows and Linux systems is not a problem. And no, simply changing the extension would not work, not on any platform.

 

OpenOffice Writer also has a cool feature of exporting the document as a .pdf file. Very useful for creating documentation and such.

 

how do i tweak the laptop to make it run faster?, this is with windows 2000 pro installed by the way

 

You can start out disabling a useless feature of the NTFS filesystem, the "last access" timestamp. Assuming, of course, that you're using an NTFS filesystem. It makes a pretty big difference on laptops, since laptop HDDs are especially slow.

Registry Settings:

Code:

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
Value Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable, 1 = enable)

By the way, I know you said you were a novice user, so make sure you install all of the latest hardware drivers available for your laptop, and enable DMA on all IDE devices (HDD, CDROM, etc). You may have already known that, if so disregard this.

-AT

 

Code:

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
Value Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable, 1 = enable)

Wow do you know you're stuff or what! Great work AT. This would work on XP right? (as it's basically just 2000Pro with a few extra features).

 

Yep. Any version of Windows that can use NTFS.

 

could someone exsplain to me what 'NTFS filesystem' is please?

 

NTFS (NT file system; sometimes New Technology File System) is the file system that the Windows NT operating system uses for storing and retrieving files on a hard disk. NTFS is the Windows NT equivalent of the Windows 95 file allocation table (FAT) and the OS/2 High Performance File System (HPFS). However, NTFS offers a number of improvements over FAT and HPFS in terms of performance, extendibility, and security.

When a hard disk is formatted, it is divided into partitions or major divisions of the total physical hard disk space. Within each partition, the operating system keeps track of all the files that are stored by that operating system. Each file is actually stored on the hard disk in one or more clusters or disk spaces of a predefined uniform size. Using NTFS, the sizes of clusters range from 512 bytes to 64 kilobytes. Windows NT provides a recommended default cluster size for any given drive size. For example, for a 4 GB (gigabyte) drive, the default cluster size is 4 KB (kilobytes). Note that clusters are indivisible. Even the smallest file takes up one cluster and a 4.1 KB file takes up two clusters (or 8 KB) on a 4 KB cluster system.

The selection of the cluster size is a trade-off between efficient use of disk space and the number of disk accesses required to access a file. In general, using NTFS, the larger the hard disk the larger the default cluster size, since it's assumed that a system user will prefer to increase performance (fewer disk accesses) at the expense of some amount of space inefficiency.

When a file is created using NTFS, a record about the file is created in a special file, the Master File Table (MFT). The record is used to locate a file's possibly scattered clusters. NTFS tries to find contiguous storage space that will hold the entire file (all of its clusters).

Each file contains, along with its data content, a description of its attributes (its metadata).

 

so how do i disable a useless feature of the NTFS filesystem?

 

Read post 25 by AntiTrend!
But i'm sure there are many useless feature if the NTFS filesystem but none i can think of off the top of my head!

 

well how do i disable the "last access" timestamp?

 

I can't believe you asked that. It's in this very thread, post # 25. Open up regedit or regedit32 and add the registry information I've provided. If you're uncomfortable doing that, don't do it; you can break Windows quite easily by tinkering with the registry.

-AT