My Sony VAIO boasts a proud “Designed for Windows 98” sticker. I’m not sure it really should be that proud of its heritage. At the time I purchased the laptop, two different versions were available. One shipped with Windows98, and the other with Windows 2000. I already owned a copy of 2000 which I could use on the machine, so opted to save a few pennies and bought the Windows98 version. Apart from a quick BIOS flash, the only remaining difference between the two was the sticker.

This week I reinstalled the laptop with Windows XP Pro. In fact, that’s a lie. I tried to reinstall with Windows XP (after reading positive things in Google Groups about compatibility and performance), but couldn’t get the CD image I had to boot on startup. Eager to discover if I had a poor burn or a hardware fault, I chucked a Windows Server 2003 disc in and booted up. This worked. So much so that before I could do much more about it I was half way through installing Windows Server 2003 and past the point of no return.

So for a short while this week, my aged Sony VAIO PIII 650Mhz 256Mb laptop was a Windows Server 2003 Server (stupid new naming convention…). It ran quite well, and was perfectly usable, but, really …

I managed to find a better Windows XP disc in the end and reinstalled (again). So now it runs XP, and does so very nicely. I’m not sure why my Dell Optiplex at work ran slower after installing XP, but this little laptop runs much more smoothly. So much so that I might even consider reinstalling my main box too.

Mind you, it’s still not a patch on OS X…