I'm looking for a new laptop. At least 2Gb of RAM, at least 160Gb Hard Drive, Windows XP and either s-video or video RCA (phono) output with a budget of around £350?

I await your suggestions

No computer fairs near? The last one I had the pleasure of visiting had some good kit, but that was a while ago.
My last purchase was from Currys (Sony Vaio) but came installed with Vista.

PCWB
Laptops Direct
EuroPC

Or buy a Mac !

You may struggle to find xp now as bill gates said as of july last year no manufacturers were to bundle with oem xp

also the majority of new breed of laptops come with sata drives and xp doesnt have the drivers for sata so you cant even install your own copy of xp, if you have one, unless you know somebody who can embed the drivers into a copy of your xp disk. Also if you get a vista machine you may struggle to get xp drivers for all the other devices

I bought a new acer last may and that came with acers oem software suite (xp) which is a pain in the rear. they had added the drivers for xp to work with the sata drive and it took me ages to find why i couldnt install my own version of xp. Thanks Andy if you read this.

Whatever you get will be full of junk that eats resources..........its funny half way through a gig just as you are working a mix when norton kicks in to do a full system scan.

Vista pro with an xp downgrade may be your best option but if you intend to use your laptop as your main playback device i would look at getting somebody to sort it for you.

happy shopping

what will be it's purpose ? I haven't seen a laptop with s-video or composite for a while now. Some of the newer models have HDMI.

There are a number of convertors on the market that will convert VGA to pretty much anything you need if you look around. This would mean you could use another laptop in the event of a failure as a backup.

Due to demand some companies are still bundling Vista with an XP roll back disc. This takes a bit of time to do, as it forces you to make minor changes during a boot cycle, then begin a changeover install from the supplied 'roll back' disc and then back up the entire existing Vista installation (whether you want to or not).

What could be a really simple xp / vista dual boot changeover option can take an hour for those inexperienced in this, I suspect its been made extra time consuming purely on the basis that most non IT savvy folk will just settle with the Vista installation

But yes, it is possible and yes XP is available with some newer models provided you are up for a bit of time and a learning curve.

S- video went out with the Ark though and are restricted to older / 2nd hand options and it'd be very unlikely to find a brand new model with those specs. Various adaptors and convertors are available though as mentioned above

try someone like telephones on line. They specialise in refurbs. These are shop returns, but are virtually new. I see that they are offering £299 delivered Sony Viaos with 200gb HD , 2gb Ram and 1.86ghz duo core, 12 month warranty. Good spec.

My Acer Aspire 5920 has S-Video out.
Centrino Core 2 Duo, 160G HD, 2GB memory.
I installed XP on it, all the drivers are available for XP and there was just oe thing to change in the BIOS to let it boot XP from the SATA drive.

Jim

I've recently (last week) brought Sony Vaios, HP laptops and have downgraded to XP with no problems.

Is there a problem with using Vista anyway? Providing you have adequate hardware it should be fine.
So if the laptop has 2GB+ ram, Duel Core processor and modern Graphics system, I'd try running with Vista before downgrading to XP.

I found it to be a resource hog even when comparing a fresh like for like install on identical machines, when idling with nothing (not even AV / Firewall software installed), seems to be a lot more bloatware in the background than on Xp

It also doesn't play nicely with existing sound cards which may be a few years old, or other USB devices which may not be suited to it, and whose drivers are not yet available in Vista or manufactured by companies which are now defunct.

Over the years i've collected £1000's of accessories and computer equipment, the majority of which runs stable on XP. I'm not chucking it all out and buying 'vista compatible' hardware just because Microshaft deems that I should. Thats a bit like the Government telling you to buy a brand new car every 3 years just to help the ailing car industry, and then making it impossible to use and tax cars aged over 3 years so they can no longer run or be supported by the dealers.