Operating Systems for Dell Laptops

[nin137]

this may be a stupid question, but can you install any operating system on a dell laptop? for example, if i bought the laptop with xp home on it and then bought professional and upgraded, would that work?
i ask just because i think it's kind of weird that they don't seem to actually give you the xp cd with the computer.
so how would you ever reformat the thing if need be? i just want to make sure that there are no proprietory restrictions on their machines, before i go with the xp home version.

[Statica]

Yes it would work just fine; all you would need are the drivers for the hardware (which should be available either on CD or from the Dell site).

[jayb1234]

If you go into the customize menu for the machine there should be an option to order it with XP Pro, and another to order the actual cd for about $10.

[pam123]

Yes you can install any operating system on a Dell laptop, you may have a problem with drivers and productivity software though.
Dell uses a seperate partition on the hard drive as a 'restore' partiton so any reformatting would be done from there, though you can order a copy of the 'restore' cd from Dell, I forget the price but I don't think it's more that $20.
Just upgrading to pro wouldn't be a problem but it begs the question of why you didn't order the computer with XP pro in the first place.