[OFB Cafe] New Laptop... A Report

[Donald Spoon]

My wife decided to present me with a new laptop for Christmas, but 
allowed me to select it.  I was watching the sales and special deals 
from Best Buy, etc looking for a decent Dell or Toshiba machine.  Dell 
had a sale on their model 1525 Inspirons last week end, and I almost got 
one.  I was doing the on-line "Configuration", when I ran up against the 
option for "Wild Tanget Games", which was a "try before buying" deal 
that I definatetly didn't want.  When I tried to remove the option, it 
protested implying it was needed for the overall system, and wouldn't 
let me uncheck it!  I did the on-line "Chat" thing to Dell Sales and 
explained the problem to "Dave" who assured me he could remove it by 
entering the order on his end.  Since I had made several minor changes 
like the color, no dial-up ISP, etc, which didn't change the base sale 
price, I wasn't inclined to repeat it all again over the "Chat" so I 
asked for a call-back to complete my order.  Dave took my information 
and assured me that his assistant would be calling me in 2-3 minutes. 

I waited, and waited, and waited...  I got bored and went to the Best 
Buy site and started looking there.  I ran across an Acer Aspire model 
6930 that had identical hardware, except it had a larger screen (16") 
and a larger Hard Drive for about $40 less!  I also found that the local 
stores had them in stock and I wouldn't have to wait 7-10 days for one 
to be "built"!  I ran down and took a look at the display model, liked 
what I saw, and bought one.  Dell hasn't called me back yet...

My old laptop was an Acer Aspire 1522, which has served me well over the 
years, so I didn't have any heartburn about the brand.  I decided to 
accept the default Winders Vista, since there didn't seem to be many 
other options.  On my old Acer they and divided the HD into two main 
partitions and installed XP on one and used the other for "Backup".  
This computer had the same thing, which makes it nice if you want to 
install Linux!!  You just delete the backup partion (NOT the hidden 
recovery partitions that contain the Vista self-install) and put the 
Linux Dist of your choice there.  On my new computer, I have about 140 
Gigs of space to install Linux.  The only problem is that Acer had used 
all 4 of the "Primary" partions in the original partition schema, so you 
have to make the old Backup partition into an Extended partition in 
order to have a place to put the Swap partition and the EXT3 primary 
Linux partions.  I dunno if Acer does this for all their computers, but 
it has happened to me twice now, so I though I would pass it on.  Of 
course you CAN delete all and use the entire HD for Linux if you want.  
This is just a suggestion on how to do minimal damage...

BTW,. a good set of System Rescue Tools that has GParted on it comes in 
handy.  I used this one:  http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

I also grabbed the latest KUBUNTU iso image and burned a CD.  This iso 
has KDE 4 on it.  Once I re-rigged my BIOS to boot from the CD, I put in 
the KUBUNTU CD and tried the live disc option. which was the first one 
on the list.  Amazingly, it booted the first try and even discovered the 
wireless WIFI chipset, wireless mouse, audio, and proper Xorg screen 
driver!  In short, KUBUNTU "just worked" on this new machine!  I was 
especially amazed at it discovered the wireless WIFI chipset (which 
supports the draft N spec too).  All I had to do was supply a few config 
items, like which AP I wanted to connect to and the WEP key in order to 
connect to my home Lan!  I did a little digging and found out the 
included chipset was an Intel Wireless Link 5100, and Intel has 
published drivers for it.  In fact Intel these drivers are now 
incorporated in the new Linux Kernels!  (2.6.25 and higher I think)!  
Intel seems to be aggressively supporting Linux.   The live disc feature 
is really neat, in that it let me see if I was going to have any 
hardware problems before I actually changed anything up.  It now seems 
that I can safely put Ubuntu or Kubuntu or probably Debian Lenny on this 
computer without having any major hassles!  Dunno how this all 
translates into the other Dists.

My,  how far we have come....

Well, that is my report for now.  I am having fun down here in Geezerland!

Cheers,
-Don Spoon-