Went and installed a clean version to Windows 2000. But the darn 8-9 sec hesitation is still there. This is with the Intel SpeedStep disabled in the BIOS. So there is something in the laptop that is doing something every 8-9 secs. I've tried all the 3 parallel port modes too, no difference. I've forced the parallel port to use IRQ7 and still nothing.

Now the key thing for me is to decide if I should invest in the SmoothStepper or a mini-ITX computer.