[ale] new t-40 thinkpad...

[Dow Hurst]

BootitNG will resize and slide partitions around and is shareware.  
Worked great for me.
Partition Magic is the standard.
The Opensource NTFS project on Sourceforge provides ntfsresizer which 
works well on resizing the current partition into half its original 
size.  If you never boot XP before running ntfsresizer then you might 
get much better results.  I think NTFS immediately puts some data at the 
far end of the filesystem so the partition can't be resized easily.  The 
inherent MS utility for fscking the NTFS filesystem sucks big time.  You 
won't want to use it on a regular basis if you were running XP for 
real.  I'll tell you from my experience that XP seems sexy at first and 
is much more stable than anything else that MS has done for the consumer 
version of their OS.  To avoid getting bogged down in it, I wouldn't 
even bother booting it.

My reasons are these:

1.  Everything you want to do will cost you the price of the software to 
do it.
2.  Everything you want to do is controlled by licensing issues.
3.  Even though it looks sexy, your still running as damaged root unless 
configured by an expert.
4.  Even though you think you'll run as the lesser user, you end up 
doing most stuff as root due to convenience.
5.  Viruses and worms.  Note the news today.
6.  You'll feel better about it later if you don't boot it to XP. :-)

I say all that risking flames and such since I've been impressed enough 
to realize that MS has gotten enough stability now that uninformed users 
are liking it and wanting to use it.  It is pretty and most stuff just 
works.  The wizards hide the bad decisions about security on the Net 
from you so that many people are completely wide open.  All kinds of 
cheap devices work quickly since your root and the drivers come in the 
box.  It is amazing how used to buying limiting preconfigured software 
people have become.  Anyway, I feel sympathetic since I've been where 
you are with a fancy laptop from Dell that came thru me to a user.  I 
wish now that I hadn't even bothered since it just wasted a bunch of my 
time dealing with resizing the partition because I had to boot the OS to 
see the coon.  It was wide open on the campus wireless network 
immediately.  It just isn't worth your time to see a pretty picture and 
cute wizards slapped on top of NT.
Good luck with putting the good stuff on it!
Dow


David S. Jackson wrote:

>Howdie!
>
>I'm the proud owner of a new t-40 thinkpad.  Of course it came
>with WinXP Slo err, Pro.  Can the new install routines resize
>ntfs partitions?  
>
>I'm so used to installing the old fashioned way, with boot floppy
>or CD-ROM, and to bare metal, that I'm uncertain how to add an OS
>to an existing windows install.  I figer I might as well keep the
>xp since I've paid for it and there's no hope of returning it
>without the machine too (and thus losing a nice piece of
>hardware).  I usually use a Slack or Debian distro, or sometimes
>FreeBSD.  But you gurus must have installed to a laptop recently.
>I'd like to avoid blasting the windows until I've had a chance to
>play a bit; the last distro of windows I've seen was Me, and that
>sucked so my wife went back to 98se.  (For the daughter's
>edutainment games, mostly.)  
>
>Anyway, I figured I'd start with Slack.  How do you resize an
>NTFS partition?
>
>  
>

-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428           
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744           
1000 Chastain Rd. Bldg. 12                                
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu  
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Kennesaw, GA 30144                                        
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