t23 and recovery cd

[justjohn]

Hi. I have a t23 that originally came with windows 2000 on it. However for the past few years I've been running windows xp home on it and haven't had any problems. Recently the hard drive died and needed to be replaced. I can't find my xp home disk. I know from the IBM/Lenovo website that xp pro was an available option on this computer and I want to know if I can buy a recovery cd from IBM/Lenovo or Ebay and load xp pro onto the new hard drive and if it's legal to do it that way. What about windows 7? Would that be better? I don't want to go to jail. Jail would be bad. thanks, jj

[Neil]

Hi jj, welcome to the forum.

It's nice to see someone concerned with keeping it legal, but it's more a matter of morals and honesty than going to jail.

Microsoft requires a license to "legally" use their OS. So your T23 has a license to use Win2K. Those T23 that shipped with XP installed had a license for XP. So, no, you cannot legally use XP or 7 with a 2K license.

Of course, you can purchase an XP license (or 7 license, but don't even consider it for a T23) and legally use it on your T23.

Best course, in my opinion, would be to use an open sourse OS such as Linux or BSD, and completely avoid licensing issues.

[cadillacmike68]

Also, Lenovo announced that they will not sell XP or earlier recovery CDs any more. You can find them though. RBS might have them ther is a thread on this.

I'm looking for a T23 win98SE recovery CD.

[justjohn]

Thanks for your help. I greatly appreciate it. jj