The excuse from Windnose is the EUFI is keeping bad guys out, it's a virus deterrent. Problem is it also deterrs anybody wanting to boot another operating system on the same hard drive. Well for that matter any other hard drive because you can't get it to boot from any other source. So you're right Omni, but to be friendly they could at least offer a work-around. I suppose that would allow virus attacks too though.

Geland!!! I don't know half of what you're saying...what's a SSD and what's a VM and if they're dirty words please don't spell them out.

SSD= solid state drive, on many new computers they either install hybrid hard drive or have a small dedicated SSD to improve on booting time and to place cache of frequently used programs.
Often these drives are not user accessible (unless you are willing to deal with lower level system controls that is)
And thus if they made this drive as your first active boot drive, you could not change boot order to another OS other than the OS that is already appointed.
ie. if you cannot add another boot device unless you can re appoint another OS starting location.

VM = Virtual machine. Eg, VMWare, Virtual PC etc..
Since most program are not portable to another type of OS, there exist programs called Virtual machines, where they EMULATE another OS within the base OS.
So for example, you can have full complete Red hat, Ubuntu, Mac OSX, WIN XP, WIN 2000, Win 7 and Darwin, running simultaneously and independently within your base system.

VM is very useful since the actual installation can be portable and switched on as needed, eg, if you need to run specific program on Linux, yet your computer runs windows, simply run VM and open your Linux OS image (within your windows environment) and run the program.. Vice versa it can be Linux as base and runs Windows in VM.
My main desktop computer has Ubuntu as a base and I run windows on Virtual PC as needed, and I plan on my new laptop to run Ubuntu on VM with Win 7 as a base.

Elementary.. of course we know that..after all this is a hunting website ..

Don't believe the battery hours given unless you expect VERY low CPU usage during that time.
I have an Acer Timeline that I like very much, except that advertised 8 hour battery life is more like five in real world use.

Ok Geland you just opened up a whole nuther can-o-worms for me now....I want a VM. I thought a virtual machine was cloud computing, now I have some studying to do, this looks better than what I'm doin.

Of course the published battery life is counted as the machine is idle and at the lowest monitor brightness, with all wireless off and hard drive off.


So fat I get about 5 hours off my Samsung as I use it for programming and design.
So I am quite happy.

Suz

Since you have a newer pc your cpu will be able to run a VM without any problems.

www.vmware.com/

www.virtualbox.org/

there are others also but not as refined.

It's looking too technical for me, but i'd like to try it sometime. There's a whole lot I don't understand right now. What a great idea too.

Suz,
Its very simple..

1. go to Microsoft.com.
2. Download "Virtual PC"
3. Install the program.

IF your windows is of PROFESSIONAL, ENTERPRISE or ULTIMATE type
4. Run Virtual PC and you will get a screen with Windows XP ready to use.

If your windows is of the HOME type
4. Run Virtual PC and then INSTALL Windows XP from a Windows XP installation disk
5. Run the new installation within the Virtual PC software.