Acer, Asus, and MSI may have been busy making headlines this week, but not everything is about hardware. Microsoft and Xandros both made moves this week that could have a major impact on the low cost ultraportable laptop market:

• Microsoft softens its stance on Windows XP for low cost computers: While Microsoft may have stopped selling Windows XP directly to consumers on June 30th, there are still a few ways to get the operating system. You can buy a pricey new computer with Windows Vista or Business and pay for downgrade rights. Or you can pick up a cheap laptop. Vista doesn't run that well on machines with tiny hard drives (or solid state disks) and little RAM. So Microsoft is keeping XP alive for a few more years for companies like Asus and MSI to install on tiny laptops. This week Microsoft eased its definition of low-cost computers a bit, so now computer makers can install XP on systems with 14 inch monitors or 160GB hard drives.
• Xandros buys Linspire: In other operating system news, Xandros, makers of the Linux-based operating system that Asus uses on the Eee PC (although Asus customizes the heck out of it), has purchased Linspire, the company formerly known as Lindows. While Linspire never really caught on as the Windows XP-replacement it aimed to be, the software is easy to use and includes the ability to run many Windows applications out of the box. Perhaps future Eee PC models will take advantage of some of the better features of Linspire.

You may not be able to pick up an Eee PC 901 yet (unless you happen to be in Taiwan), but if you plan to pick up the Linux model eventually and add Windows XP manually, Asus has you covered. The company has posted Windows XP drivers on its support web site. The files include:

• Audio driver
• Bluetooth driver
• Chipset Driver
• LAN driver
• Advanced Configuration and Power Interface driver
• Touchpad driver
• Graphics driver
• WLAN driver

[via Eee PC News.de]

Those wacky OLPC folks have been working with Microsoft on a way to cram Windows XP onto the XO Laptop for a few months now. And while we've already seen video evidence of Windows running on the hardware, Gizmodo has what appears to be the first video showing a single XO Laptop dual booting Linux and Windows XP.

Here's how it works. The XO has just 1GB of built-in, solid state memory. So you throw a light weight Linux distro on there. And then you load Windows XP onto a bootable 2GB SD card so that you have the option of loading up either operating system when you boot your computer.

Note that the video includes some heavy time-lapse photography. So it's not clear how long it actually takes Windows to boot.

Following the lead of Asus, MSI will be including a Windows XP driver disc with every MSI Wind laptop, whether you order a PC running Windows or Linux. For some reason HP decided to wait until the HP 2133 Mini-Note had been out for a few weeks before posting Windows XP drivers online, but MSI has gone ahead and added a bunch of drivers to the MSI Wind support site even though the PC won't be released for at least another few days.

If you dig around the MSI Wind U100 page, here are some of the things you can find:

• A BIOS file
• Windows XP LAN drivers
• Windows XP CardReader drivers
• Windows XP WLAN drivers
• Windows XP VGA drivers
• Windows XP Touchpad drivers
• Windows XP Chipset drivers
• Windows XP Bluetooth drivers
• Windows XP Audio drivers
• A system control manager application for Windows XP
• Instruction manuals in 24 languages

There don't appear to be any Linux support files at the moment, but MSI doesn't plan to release the Linux model of the Wind notebook until the XP version has been out for a little while. In the meantime, I'm sure members of the Linux community will try their hardest to find the best way to run Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, and other distributions on the MSI Wind.

Last month Microsoft announced plans to offer PC makers deep discounts on Windows XP for "ultra low cost PCs." Microsoft defines ULPCs as computers with 10.2 inch or smaller screens, 1GB of RAM or less, 80GB or smaller hard drives, and 1GHz or slower processors (with exceptions for devices with an Intel Atom or VIA C7/Nano CPU). And touchscreen devices need not apply.

Now that a number of computer makers are starting to offer super cheap desktops by using some of the same cheap components that are showing up in these subnotebooks, Microsoft has extended its offer to companies building PCs it calls "nettops." In a nutshell, a nettop is a computer that sells betwen $100 and $299 and uses the Intel Atom Diamondville procesor.

This is a win-win for PC makers and Microsoft. While Microsoft will be charging just a fraction of the original price for Windows XP, the company will at least be getting its operating system on more computers, while manufacturers will be able to offer customers one of the most widely used operating systems in the world while keeping costs relatively low. Of course, it's hard to compete with free, and we're seeing a growing number of companies offer both Windows and Linux versions of their computers.

[via The Guardian]

I had high hopes for the Everex Cloudbook. Really, I did. When the company announced it would be releasing an Eee PC competitor, there were few other products in its class on the market. And while the initial Cloudbook didn't have a solid state drive, or a conventional touchpad, it did have a 30Gb hard drive, WiFi, and a screen that was nearly identical to that on the Eee PC. What it didn't have was a user-friendly operating system.

Everex decided to load gOS on its Cloudbook laptops. The operating system is built on the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, but it's built with an eye toward using web applications like Google Docs and Gmail. It's not quite as user-friendly as Ubuntu, due largely to the fact that Canonical has a huge team of developers and volunteers working on Ubuntu while gOS does not. But here's where Everex really messed up: The company didn't take any steps at all to make sure that Ubuntu ran properly on the Cloudbook. Some of the windows on the setup screen were too large to display on the Cloudbook's small monitor, which means that the first time most people turned the computer on they wouldn't know how to get past the splash screen. (The solution was to hold the alt key down while clicking and dragging the setup windows around so you can find the OK box, but that's not obvious if you're not familiar with Linux).

Everex reportedly addressed that problem in later builds. But first impressions matter, and for the most part the tech blogosphere is all gaga over the Eee PC, HP Mini- Note, MSI Wind, and other upcoming computers and has kind of forgotten about the Cloudbook. Everex does plan to release the Cloudbook Max sometime next year. It will featur a faster processor, more RAM, a larger hard drive, and a higher resolution display. But honestly, but 2009, computers in this class will be a dime a dozen.

And then out of a the blue, this morning I read that Everex is selling a computer called the Cloudbook SC1200T in Taiwan, which appears to be pretty much identical to the Cloudbook sold in the US, except it has 1GB of RAM instead of 512MB and it comes with Windows XP instead of gOS.

No word on the pricing, or whether you'll ever be able to get this unit in the US or Europe. But there's one up for auction right now for 12,000 yuan, or the equivalent of about $400 US.

Want to know how Windows XP runs on the XO Laptop? Just check out the video from the team that's been working on bringing Windows to the XO. While you'd think that Windows would have issues with the slow processor or the tiny amount of storage, the bigger challenges were apparently had to do with developing WiFi drivers and a BIOS that would support booting from a 2GB SD card (since there was no way Microsoft could cram Windows onto the 1GB of flash memory included in the XO.

Here are a few more highlights from the video:

• Windows XP and Office have not been modified. The XO laptop runs pretty much the full version of the operating system and office suite
• Video playback is surprisingly smooth, even with high bitrate videos
• You can record sound and video through the built in mic and webcam, although the webcam recordings are just as choppy as you'd expect them to be.
• You can rotate the screen with the touch of a button, and the display will change from color to monochrome when you fold the screen back into book mode.
  

[via Asus Eee Hacks]

Over the past few months we've heard inklings that Microsoft was in talks with the OLPC project to test Windows XP on the low-cost XO laptop. Now the New York Times is reporting that the OLPC organization will rollout a limited trial of Windows XP in four or five countries next month. If things go well, we could see a wider release by Septemeber.

This doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to pick up a $200 laptop running Windows XP at your local Best Buy anytime soon. The primary markets for the XO laptop are developing nations where computers are expensive and hard to come by.

The OLPC team doesn't plan to stop offering Linux based computers. But the deal with Microsoft might make the XO more attractive to some nations and educational purchasers who had balked at the idea of paying for computers that didn't run Windows, still the dominant desktop operating system in most of the world.

The Windows license will add $3 to the price of the machines, and the extra hardware required to dual boot both Windows and Linux will add another $7.

Update: CNET reports that the Sugar team hopes to port the software to run on different computers. One of the first targets: The Asus Eee PC.

There are three things that separate low cost ultraportables like the Eee PC from higher end laptop computers. They're small, lightweight, and cheap. In order to keep cheap in that equation, computers makers like Asus are turning to Linux, the open source operating system that you can install and run on most computers without paying any licensing fees. And while Eee PCs, XO Laptops, and Mini-Notes aren't exactly taking over the world, this new class of low-cost subnotebook is certainly gaining a lot of attention. And that could lead some folks to believe (rightly) that Linux is a viable alternative to Windows and OS X.

Of course, Microsoft's not too happy with this development. So while the company had planned to discontinue sales of its Windows XP operating system by the end of June, 2008, Microsoft has made arrangements to continue selling and supporting its 6+ year old OS beyond that date. Because let's face it, Windows Vista isn't really designed for machines with slow processors and small hard drives.

But here's the thing. Microsoft does want to continue pushing Windows Vista. So while the company is encouraging PC makers to install Windows XP on low-cost machines as an alternative to Linux by providing deep discounts, IDG News Service reports that manufacturers will need to meet a pretty strict definition of ULPC (Ultra low-cost PC) in order to qualify for their cheap XP licenses.

That definition includes a screen that's less than 10.2 inches, 1GB of RAM or less, a hard drive with 80GB or less, and no touchscreen devices. You'll also need a 1GHz or slower processor, although Via's C7-M processors which run up to 1.6GHz are allowed, as will be Intel's new Atom processor.

That rules most version of the HP Mini-Note out, since all but one model ships with a 120GB hard drive. But that's probably fine with Microsoft, as the low-cost version of XP is really meant for PC makers who sell their computers in educational markets and developing nations. Computer makers will be able to get an XP Home Edition license for $26 if they sell their laptops in developing countries, while they'll pay $32 to license XP for use in developed countries like the US.

The HP Mini-Note, on the other hand is targeted at US consumers (and in fact, ships with Windows Vista).

If you've been holding out for HP to offer the Mini-Note with Windows XP preinstalled, I've got mixed news. The bad news is that HP will not be selling Mini-Notes with XP already loaded. The good news is that starting around May 15th, the company will offer a "downgrade" option that will let anyone who buys one of the Windows Vista Business models ask for as Windows XP installation disc and a driver disc.

In some ways, this is actually better than getting XP preinstalled, because you'll have an XP disc that you can use to reinstall the operating system if something goes wrong. But it's a bit funny to see HP selling a computer that has no CD/DVD drive and then throwing in two CDs.

If you don't want to buy a USB CD-ROM drive, you can follow my instructions for installing XP without an optical disc drive. But I'm guessing that a lot of less tech-savvy customers will decide it's too much work to install XP and just stick with Vista.

[via MiniNoteUser]

HP has finally gotten around to posting Windows XP drivers and support software on its web site. I know I wasn't the only person to install XP within hours of unboxing the Mini-Note. But now you don't have to rummage around to find drivers that work properly.

Honestly, the only problem I've noticed is that I get an error sound when booting Windows which I'm pretty sure is just my computer's way of letting me know that I'm using an audio driver that was designed for Windows Vista, not XP (I already turned off the visual notification box that popped up to tell me this every time my computer booted).

There doesn't appear to be a Windows XP audio driver on the web site, but I'm wondering if it might be bundled with the VIA chipset drivers of the HP software update tool. I plant to install both of these packages and see what happens, but since I don't intend to do a clean install of Windows XP right now, I'm not sure I'll be able to tell for certain what each package does.

Update: As of 10:26pm on 5/5, HP appears to have pulled the XP drivers down again. But I suspect they'll be back online soon, perhaps with a working audio driver.

Update 2: And Tuesday morning the XP drivers are back online. I still don't see anything that says sound, but since I already have a working Vista sound driver installed, I can't tell if any of the new drivers would have enabled audio. If you're doing a fresh install of XP, let us know if and when sound starts working when you start installing these applications and drivers.

[via HP 2133 Guide]

Order an HP Mini-Note running Linux in the US and you get a Mini-Note running Linux, a power cable, and that's about it. There's no system restore disk, and no drivers for installing alternate operating systems. While you can find drivers and software for Windows Vista on the HP support site, there's no official support for Windows XP. But it looks like if you order a Linux model in Hong Kong, you get both a Linux "system repair" CD and a disc with Windows XP drivers.

These discs are listed under "promotions," which makes it sound like HP might not offer them indefinitely. But honestly, that doesn't make any sense -- unless HP does eventually plan to make the drivers and a Linux OS/restore utility available on its web site, in which case the company will be able to save the marginal cost of creating and shipping the discs.

It's still not clear why HP would offer this promotion in Hong Kong and not the US or other markets though.

[via MiniNoteUser]

Installing Windows XP or any other operating system is easy if you have a USB optical disc drive. But if all you've got is a USB flash drive and another computer with a DVD burner, you can still install Windows XP (or many Linux distributions for that matter) on a disc drive-less ultraportable like the HP Mini-Note or the Asus Eee PC. After spending most of Saturday installing Windows XP on my HP Mini-Note I thought I'd share my results with you. Remember, your results may very, so while these are the steps that worked for me, they may not work for you. For example, depending on the version of Windows XP you are using, you may need a different hotfix to install the audio drivers.

There were two resources that were extraordinarily helpful. Bsumpter at MiniNoteUser wrote up an excellent tutorial for installing XP on a Mini-Note, and EeeGuides has a great walkthrough for installing XP on an Eee PC using a flash drive. By combining these methods and a few other, I was able to setup my Mini-Note with a Windows partition, a spare partition for installing Linux, and a large data partition for shared files.

Here's what you'll need:

1. 1 USB flash drive, 1GB or larger
2. 1 Windows XP installation disc
3. Assorted files that I'll describe as we go along (Please note that DivShare has a bandwidth limit which we may exceed if enough people read this post and follow these directions. If anyone wants to offer mirrors for the downloads, let me know and I'll post the links).
   

Preparing the flash drive

First up, we need to prepare the flash drive.

1. Download and unzip this file, which should contain 2 folders: 1 titled Bootsect, and the other USB_prep8.
2. Navigate to the USB_prep8 folder and click on usb_prep8.cmd. This will bring up a Windows console window.
3. Press any key to continue and a PeToUSB window will open.
   
4. Make sure your flash drive is selected, and click start to format your flash drive.
5. When the format is complete, click OK, but do not close the PeToUSB window or the Windows Console.
6. Open a new console window by typing "cmd" into the run box in the Windows Start Menu.
7. Find your Bootsect folder (if you're not used to DOS commands, you can type "dir" to list directories and files, type "cd foldername" to navigate to a folder name - called foldername in this example, and if there's a long folder name you can save time by typing the "cd" and just the first few letters and then hitting the Tab key to fill in the rest of the name).
8. Once you're in the Bootsect folder, type "bootsect.exe /nt52 g:" if "g" is the letter assigned to your flash drive. If it's E, then change the letter to e. If it's Z, make it z. Get it?
9. When this is done, you should see a message letting you know that the bootcode was updated, and you can close this console window (but not the other console window).
10. Close the PeToUSb Window, but make sure not to close the remaining console window yet
11. You should now see a list of 8 options in the console.
12. Select one and find the drive with your Windows installation disc.
13. Select 2 and pick a random drive letter (but not one that's already on your PC, since this will be a virtual drive used for copying your files).
14. Select 3 and enter the drive letter for your USB flash drive.
15. Select 4 and follow the rest of the on-screen directions and you should be all set.
    

The process should take about 15-20 minutes. When it's done, you should have a bootable USB stick that you can use to install Windows XP the same way you would if you had a CD/DVD drive.

A few notes here. First of all, there's a chance you may get down to step 15 and the program will tell you that it can't create the virtual drive. This may happen if you've already gone through the whole process and are trying to do it again to fix problems. The solution seems to be rebooting your computer and trying again. Or at least that's what worked for me.

Second, if you use NLite to shrink/slipstream/otherwise modify your Windows XP installation file, make sure you do not remove "manual installation files," or your USB stick will be pretty much useless.

Installing XP on the Mini-Note

Now it's time to load Windows XP onto your Mini-Note. If you have a USB CD/DVD drive, you probably skipped all the stuff above, and that's fine. Most of the following steps should work as well. These instructions should work whether you're installing Windows XP on a system that came preloaded with SUSE or Windows Vista.

1. Insert your USB flash drive in one of the USB ports on your Mini-Note.
   
2. Power on your computer and hit F9 to bring up a boot device selection window.
3. Choose your flash drive, or if you're using a USB optical disc drive, select that instead.
4. Select 2 for a text-based installation.
5. Make sure to delete all of the partitions on the hard drive. While you may have some success creating separate partitions on your hard drive using this method, I did not. If you find yourself with a Hal.dll or bootloader missing error when you're finished, there's a good chance it's because you did not delete all of the partitions. Note that I will be providing instructions in the next section for partitioning your hard drive after installing Windows XP, so you can still create a Linux partition later.
6. Create one large NTFS partition (using the quick option will save you a lot of time)
7. Follow the on-screen directions.
   
8. At least once during the install process, you will be prompted to reboot your computer. If you try to let it boot from the hard drive, you'll get an error message. What you need to do is hit F9 again when it reboots and this time select option 1 for a GUI setup.
9. Once you're done installing XP, you may notice that you are unable to boot into Windows from the hard drive. If you have the USB disk installed, again hit F9, and select the GUI option again. Windows should start. You'll need to edit the boot.ini file:
1. Type "msconfig" into the run box in the start menu
2. Select the BOOT.INI tab
3. First, try the "Check All Boot Paths," option. This may solve your problem by finding and removing the incorrect boot settings.
4. You may also need to edit the boot.ini file manually if it doesn't read something like 'multi(o)disk(0)rdisk(o)partition(1)\Windows="Windows XP Pro" /fastdetect'
5. The most likely problem is that wrong partition is selected. It may say (0) or (2) or something like that. The steps below will show you how to backup and edit it.
6. Open your System Properties by right-clicking on My Computer and choosing Properties. Alternately, you could type "sysdm.cpl" into the run box in the start menu
7. Select the Advanced Tab
8. Click the Settings option under Startup and Recovery
9. Click the button that says Edit to open up your boot.ini file in Notepad. It's a good idea to save a backup now by selecting Save As, and saving the file to a place where you won't forget it.
   
10. Now you can (somewhat) safely edit the boot.ini file, changing the partition number or other settings to more closely resemble the one I listed above. Save your file, and hopefully you'll be able to reboot without your USB stick.

Configuring Windows XP

Update: HP has added Windows XP drivers to its support page for the Mini-Note. You should try these official drivers before using the drivers listed below.

Now you should have a working Windows XP desktop, but you'll find that you can't connect to the internet via Ethernet or WLAN, you have no sound, and no support for the Fn keys. In order to fix these issues you're going to need a few files. I've wrapped them all up into a ZIP file which you can download. Again, if someone wants to mirror this file, please let me know the link and I'll post the mirrors as well.

Once you've downloaded this file using another computer, you can copy it to your Mini-Note using a flash drive or SD card. Or if you'd rather just install the Ethernet drive so you can download the full 20MB ZIP file on your Mini-Note, you can find the Broadcom Ethernet Driver here. Once you unzip the files into a folder, you should have everything you need to get Windows XP up and running.

To install the Broadcom driver:

1. Open the device manager by right-clicking on the My Computer dialog, selecting Hardware, and then Device Manager
2. You should notice a bunch of little yellow alert icons. One will say something like Gigabit Ethernet. Honestly I forget exactly what I said, but it was pretty obvious.
3. Right click on the Ethernet icon and select Update Driver.
4. Select the Have Disk option, and navigate to the subfolder labeled win_xp_2k3_32 and choose the b57win32.inf file.

Now you should be able to connect to the internet, activate windows, and download most of the rest of the drivers you need from windows update. You'll need to select the Custom option in order to get some of these updates. This should provide the drivers for your WLAN, touchpad, and other hardware.

Note that Windows Update didn't automatically suggest the webcam driver for me. In order to install it, I had to find the webcam in the Device Manager (once all the other drivers, including the audio driver -- see below -- were installed, it was the only devices with a yellow flag next to it), and select the Install software automatically option. That did the trick.

Next, let's enable sound. There does not appear to be a working audio driver for XP yet, but I'm holding out hope that HP will post one on its website when the company begins offering Mini-Note computers preloaded with Windows XP. I'm not going to hold my breath though. HP currently sells Mini-Notes preloaded with SUSE Enterprise, but there are no drivers or other support files on the HP web site for this configuration yet. Anyway, what you need to do is install a hotfix that will let you run the Windows Vista audio driver.

1. Run the KB888111.exe patch. If you have Windows XP SP1, you can run the kb888111xpsp1.exe file instead. Note that you should do this before upgrading to Windows XP SP2 or SP3. In fact, when I tried to update my system from SP1 to SP2, I wound up with an unbootable system, so if you have a Windows XP Sp1 install disc, I'd recommend skipping SP2 altogether and jumping straight ahead to SP2. You can either grab a release candidate of SP3, wait a few days for Microsoft to release it officially, or if you look around I'm sure you can find it today.
2. The file called sp38873.exe is the audio driver. Go ahead and click it and it will start to install the Vista audio drivers. Installation will fail because you're not running Windows Vista, but the installer will create a folder that contains the driver.
3. Find your sound device in the Device Manager. It should still be an unknown device with a big ole yellow flag next to it. Select update driver, choose the have disk option, and navigate to the folder where you unzipped your Vista audio drivers.

Keep in mind that this audio driver is not designed to run on Windows. And every time you boot your computer, a pop up window will alert you to this fact. Here's how to disable this pop up:

1. Type "msconfig" into the run box in the start menu.
2. Select the startup tab.
3. Uncheck the box next to smax4pnp.
4. Click OK and reboot your computer.

Finally, you can install the HP QuickLuanch buttons to add support for the Fn keys. All you have to do here is click the file called HP buttons SP32280.exe and ignore any messages that pop up during this installation.

Now everything should work properly. You'll probably want to adjust your display settings to use large or extra large fonts and large icons. The HP QuickLaunch utility also includes a Desktop Zoom utility which may help make your Mini-Note display a bit easier to see. But this computer has got a super-sharp display, so you may find that you need to tweak the default font sizes in other applications including Firefox if you want to be able to read your screen without squinting.

Using Parted Magic to create new partitions for Linux or other operating systems

While I tend to use Windows XP on a day to day basis, I wanted to make this a dual boot system so I can install Linux on a separate partition. Most Linux distributions aren't very particular about where they're installed. You can put them on a second or third partition, or even on an SD card in your card reader. But Windows likes to have the first partition all to itself. So while you may be able to use the Windows installer to set up partitions on the hard drive, I had more success installing Windows XP first, and then using Parted Magic to resize the Windows partition and create additional partitions.

The best time to do this is right after you install Windows. Your main partition will be fairly clean which will make the resizing operation go much more quickly. We're talking about the difference between a minute or two and a half hour or more. You'll also save yourself a lot of pain and heartache if something goes wrong and you wind up wiping your Windows partition, because you won't have spent days loading and configuring all of your favorite programs yet.

I'm going to assume you're still using a USB flash drive, but you can also use Parted Magic from a CD-ROM. Detailed instructions for setting up either a flash drive or a CD-ROM are available from the Parted Magic homepage. The main difference is that if you're using a flash drive, you need to use SYSLINUX to make it bootable.

Once you've got your installation media:

1. Reboot your Mini-Note with the flash drive or CD-ROM plugged into a USB port.
2. Hit F9 and choose the device you want to boot from.
3. From the boot menu, make sure to selection option 4: Failsafe Settings
4. Wait a few minutes until you're presented with a command prompt that says "root@PartedMagic:~#"
5. Type "menu"
6. Choose Xvesa (if you had tried almost anything other than option 4 in step 3, the system would try to boot using Xorg and your display would look all funny/unusable)
7. You should now see a graphical user interface that looks a bit like this:
8. Click the little blue icon on the bottom of the screen that says "VisParted." This will bring up a partition manager
9. Your primary hard drive should be listed as /dev/sda. But if it's not, it shouldn't be too hard to find since you probably only have one 120GB hard drive connected to your PC. Note that VisParted will say your hard drive is actually closer to 112GB.
10. There should be one large partition labeled as /dev/sda1. You can right click on this and choose the resize/move option and then resize the partition either by dragging the edges or entering a value into the "new size" box.
11. Once your Windows partition is shrunk, you an either leave the rest of your hard drive unpartitioned for future use, create an ext2, ext3 or other partition for Linux, or do something else altogether.
    
12. Click the Apply button to execute.
13. When Parted Magic is done working its magic, you can reboot your system by clicking on the shutdown menu at the bottom right side of your screen. If everything went properly, you should still be able to boot into Windows, but you'll find that your Windows partition is smaller.

Personally, I decided to make a 25GB Windows XP partition for files and settings, a 15GB ext2 partition for installing Ubuntu or other operating systems, and I made a third NTFS partition for storing data that will be accesible no matter which OS I use.

I'm still working on setting up Windows XP on my Mini-Note, but I wanted to share something. Not only does XP boot faster than Windows Vista, as you'd expect, but it boots faster than SuSE. Like 60 seconds or less fast. Check out this video where I hit the power button on an Eee PC ("overclocked" to run at 900MHz) and the Mini-Note.

Both computers are running Windows XP SP3 RC2.

Good news for anyone who was planning on buying a Linux version of the HP 2133 Mini-Note and installing their own operating system instead of paying a few extra bucks to get a Windows Vista version. Notebook Review forum member jckaylis says he was able to install Windows XP and almost everything worked right away. Jckaylis is the same forum member who first reported that his Mini-Note running OpenSUSE was locking up and that he was having problems installing software.

Apparently he had to download a Broadcom Ethernet driver, but Windows Update found almost everything else he needed -- except for a good sound driver. So far he's been unable to get sound working.

This all comes as excellent news. I ordered an OpenSUSE model thinking I would partition the hard drive and install Windows XP on one partition and OpenSUSE or Ubuntu on another. I was expecting to get my HP Mini-Note this weekend, but I got an email from HP on Saturday morning letting me know that my order has been delayed. I was starting to think that this presented me with a good opportunity to call HP and ask if I could spend the extra $50 to get Windows Vista installed, but now that I know XP will work I think I'll let my order stand and wait for my notebook to arrive.

There's still no sign of any XP or Linux drivers or other support software or information on the HP web site. Once HP begins to officially offer XP as an option, I expect/hope that we'll be able to find drivers online. In the meantime, it looks like you can install Windows XP without waiting for HP. If you don't care about sound drivers. Which I kind of do, but I'm holding out hope that I'll be able to find a driver that works.

Update: It looks like you can install a Windows hotfix to enable support for an audio driver. I won't be able to confirm this until my Mini-Note arrives, but it looks like a promising solution.

Ever wonder how well Microsoft's Zune synchronization software works on the Eee PC? Yeah, me neither, but Stefan over at I Have a Zune happened to find himself with a Zune and an Eee PC running Windows XP. So of course one of the first things he did was install the Zune software.

It turns out it wasn't exactly a match made in heaven. The Eee PC barely meets the minimum requirements for the Zune software thanks to its slow processor, low amount of RAM, and miniscule amount of storage space. Stefan says the software was able to find the music he loaded onto an SD card without any problems, but synchronization was a bit trickier. He was eventually able to get things working, but not without some difficulties, which you can read about at his blog. And when all is said and done, you may find yourself with a working Zune sync and marketplace application on your Eee PC, but the computer's low resolution 800 x 480 pixel display makes it pretty difficult to actually browse for music in the Zune Marketplace.

The only real complain I have with the Eee PC is that its 800 x 480 pixel display is way too small for many modern day applications. Four years ago, I would have loved a portable laptop with such an amazingly crisp screen. But today I run way too many programs that require a 1024 pixel or wider screen. That's part of the reason I'm looking forward to the launch of the Eee PC 900 and the HP 2133, which will have 1024 x 600 and 1280 x 768 displays, respectively.

You can check out more pictures from Stefan's experiment at Flickr.

Now that I've got eeeXubuntu installed on my 4GB SD card, I figured I might as well try installing Windows XP on my Eee PC's main memory. After all, even if I royally mess things up, there's zero chance of ending up with an unbootable machine unless I lose my SD card.

But there are just two problems:

1. I don't want Windows XP to eat up more than half of my computer's solid state disk
2. I don't have a USB CD/DVD-ROM drive

Either one of these alone wouldn't pose much of a problem. You can slim down your Windows XP installation using nLite. Or if you want to install a full system by copying data from your XP DVD to a USB flash drive, you can follow some relatively simple instructions from Eee PC Tutorials. But try using those instructions to install an nLited copy of XP and you could be in for a world of headache.

So here's what I found out after spending the better part of a day working on it: Whatever you do, do not remove the "manual install" feature using nLite. This will make it impossible to load the files properly onto your USB flash drive. Since the manual install feature takes up 40+ MB, it looks like a prime candidate for removal at first, but looks can be deceiving.

The second thing I learned is that you must delete all 4 partitions on your Eee PC's SSD.

So in a nutshell, here's what you need:

• 1 Windows XP installation disc
• 1 USB flash drive, preferably 1GB or larger
  
• nLite
• Step by step instructions for installing XP using a flash drive

If you follow my advice and make sure not to remove "manual install" from the install disc, and make sure to delete all of your Eee PC's existing partitions (I know one says BIOS, but don't worry, you won't actually delete your BIOS if you delete this partition), you should be able to avoid the dreaded "missing hal.dll" and missing "ntldr missing" errors that seem to be the most common problems that pop up if you do things incorrectly.

Also note that several times while I was trying to install from the flash drive, I was told that files were missing. The solution seemed to be to prep the flash drive over again. I don't know why, but this seemed to help, even though I did everything exactly the same way the second time around.

Once you get XP up and running you still need to load the Asus drivers if you want support for WiFi, sound, and the Eee PC's unusual 800 x 480 pixel display. This was easier (and more time consuming) than I expected. All I had to do was copy the files from the Asus support DVD to a USB stick, plug it into my Eee PC and click setup. Installing the drivers takes a pretty long time.

Overall my Eee PC is pretty responsive when running XP, but for the first time I'm thinking seriously about upgrading the RAM from 512MB to 1GB. I disabled the page file to save space and cut down on writes to the solid state disk. And while 512MB is plenty of memory for Xandros or Xubuntu, it's a bit light for Windows XP with no page file.

When I first installed my nLited version of XP, it took up 1.3GB of space. Removing the page file got that down to just 609MB, and after clearing system backup data following the instructions in the Eee PC user manual, XP was using just 458MB. Of course, because I couldn't leave well enough alone I decided to install Windows XP SP3 RC, which bumped my installation all the way to 1.6GB. I'll continue tweaking, but for now I'm happy to say I have an Eee PC that can boot into Windows XP or eeeXubuntu.