TP Newbie - what will I need on the road? Recovery CDs?

[DaveG11th]

About to go mobile for a week with my new-to-me T42.

Do I need to take the recovery CDs? Or is there an image of the Windows XP installation stuff on the T42, so that no matter what people ask me to run network-wise or application-wise, I can install what I need?

Why am I asking this question? My previous portable ran on Windows 98SE. It's all that I know about in any sort of detail.

With 98, no adapter, no program, no network dingus, no nothing could be successfully installed unless I had the 98SE CD with me.

[lifrancis]

I am an engineering consultant. I usually have to travel to some odd places far off the beaten track. One of my constant fear is the hard drive dying on me while I am on the job. It is NOT the loss of the operating system (whatever it may be), it is the data and special programs I have on my drive. It is usually easy enough to find another computer to do my work, if I can get hold of my data. Recovery discs or Windows installation disc can only bring the computer back to a fresh state. Without my programs and data, I will be next to useless.

This is why for the last couple of years I have been travelling with a second hard drive in an ultra bay, with a complete backup (operating system and everything else I need, minus the MP3s and videos). This way, I can sleep soundly at night.

[rkawakami]

While the advice about carrying a complete backup disk image is sound, I don't think that the OP is asking that particular question. With hardware installs on Windows 98, you often had to mount the Win98 CD in order to access drivers and complete the configuration of the system; not so sure you'd need the Win98 CD for software installs unless there was some .dll missing. I don't believe that you would need a Windows XP CD to do anything similar. From what I recall, everything that I've ever installed on an XP system worked fine without needing any XP CD or the device came with its own driver and installation procedure.

As I don't rely on the recovery disks or the hidden partition on my systems, I can't say for sure that the Windows .cab files are on them. Your T42 has ethernet built in and most likely, wireless as well. As long as you can get to an internet connection, you could download whatever drivers and/or utilities you need.

[DaveG11th]

Thanks, lifrancis and ray - great idea for the backup drive.