First of all, I would like to thank everyone who gave me feedback and suggestions on my last post concerning moving to Linux.
Since then, I’ve done quite a bit of research and looking around at various manufacturers, prices, configurations and options available out there. After quite a bit of research, I think I’ve come to the same conclusion that most people seem to come to: I’ll partition the hard drive and install Linux on one partition and Windows on the other. I really don’t want Windows Vista as that’s nothing but bloatware, so I will probably install Windows XP Pro. That seems like the best option as then I can run Reason as well as other various programs that might not have a Linux equivalent.
The other option I was considering was using Wine, but I’m a little weary about using something like that though. I will probably try it as well as partitioning my hard drive, but I don’t really want to just have to rely on it. If you’ve used it before, let me know. I would like to know how well it actually runs applications that demand quite a bit of a computer’s resources (such as Reason).
I think the only thing that remains now is to find a manufacturer and the best bang for my buck.
Why not try running WinXP under Virtualization (VMWare, VirtualBox) then you can just startup the Virtaul Machine and run your apps when you need them without rebooting, it works fine for me with things like Photoshop CS3, it wont work very well though if you intend to use XP for games.
VirtualBox + WinXP works very well for me for things that aren’t games.
As for Wine, it may be easiest to point you to http://madewokherd.livejournal.com/5082.html
Wine is very inconsistent (and every new version breaks something, though it doesn’t stay broken for long), but if a specific Wine release works with a specific Windows program, that release will most likely continue to work with that program.