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Windows 2003 Server on a Dell M1210

post #1 of 8
6/22/06 at 11:41am
Thread Starter 
Anyone install W2K3 server on the Dell 1210?
I'm a SQL Server DBA and I would prefer to run the same OS on my laptop as the servers I'll be deploying my solutions on.

I'm kinda worried about:
1. Performance (Esp. Disk)
2. Power Management.
3. Upgrades. ( I know I want Merom, more RAM, faster disks in the future. )

Thanks in advance.
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post #2 of 8
6/22/06 at 7:47pm
I don't actually run 2k3 on my M1210, but I can add some info to this...

1) The performance of 2k3 is actually BETTER than XP in a lot of ways. You have to tweak the settings a bit to get it more user-oriented, but it can be done fairly easily.
2) I can't test this, but I checked on one of our servers and it does have the typical XP Power Management options, including Laptop/Portable.
3) Merom would be BIOS (Windows won't care), 2k3 will actually address all 4gb of RAM if you were to put in 2x2gb sticks (unlike XP), and Windows won't care about the hard drive either.

Drivers can be a bit of an issue, I know. I'm not sure how supported the devices are. Things like the Audigy audio (if you got that option) or the webcam (if you got it) would probably not work. I would imagine everything else should be ok, though.

Have you considered Virtual Server or VMWare? Especially with dual core, you could easily run a virtual session on one core and run 2k3 in that, while maintaing your XP host.
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post #3 of 8
6/22/06 at 11:22pm
Thread Starter 
Good thought on the VMware/virtual server. I had not even considered this option. I'll have to give virtual server a try on my system at home, just to see how well it works. It's a free download now. I guess I always thought of this as a server application, but Microsoft's web site does identify it as supporting XP in non-production environments.
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post #4 of 8
6/23/06 at 6:58am
Does VMware actually take full advantage of Virtualization Technology now? I know that it only had experimental, limited support for it -- but how about now? How is the performance as compared to single core?

And any ideas on when VMware would be able to fully support VT and allow you to run 2 OS'es simultaneously using what VT promises you could do?
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post #5 of 8
6/23/06 at 11:59am
Thread Starter 
I did a quick google on the topic and found these websites. I'm going to use what I've learned here to install this onto my current notebook.
I'm figuring that if I can get it to work there it will be more likely to get it to work on the M1210.

Run Windows Server 2003 on your MacBook
http://blog.netnerds.net/2006/05/run...-your-macbook/

Power Management
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=324347

Good article on workstation setting in 2003
http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/

More of the same
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3655

This includes some links that were not included above.
http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/tweaks.htm
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post #6 of 8
6/26/06 at 4:02am
I don't know if it is still available, but you could download a trial version of Server 2003 and give it a go.

I put Server 2003 on a VMware virtual machine and it worked fairly well.
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post #7 of 8
6/27/06 at 2:27am
I have windows server 2003 professional running an old P4 1.7GHz PC... If that brick can handle it, any new laptop today can handle it...
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post #8 of 8
6/27/06 at 10:54am
Thread Starter 
I kinda figured that it would run, the parts that concerned me were the
1. Webcam
2. Powermanagement
3. Video Drivers
4. Sound Card Drivers
5. Network Drivers (W2K3 can be very picky about its CAT5 connection)
6. WiFi drivers etc.

Basically the things that are pretty unique to the M1210 that may not have adequate/released drivers for Server 2003. I know that the code base for 2003 and XP are very close, but the slight differences can make for a long day when configuring those extensions.
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