Ed Engelking Dot Com: My new toy

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February 14, 2006

My new toy

Alright ... I finally caved in and bought my Christmas/birthday/Valentine present that Amanda has been hounding me about the past few days. When I got in from work today, we were going to go to the gun shop and purchase a new revolver. But, on the way there I told Amanda that I didn't want to go. I decided on the way that we already had a gun ... a good one at that ... and purchasing another gun would be silly.

So, instead we decided to go and get a bite to eat, and afterwards we'd head to Circuit City. Our Valentine dinner was at B-Dubs, where we had boneless chicken wings ... which were really really good.

Our initial purpose of going to Circuit City was to look for an Xbox 360. Amanda seemed to think that we'd find one there, but I knew better. We arrived at the store and I immediately headed back towards the games section, only to see the "sold out" sign. You know, the frustration that is finding an Xbox 360 is just outright mind-numbing. I don't understand why so many places are doing these damn "bundles", jacking up the price to outrageous amounts ... anywhere between $700-1000 dollars.

Anyhow, I headed to the computer section and started looking over the laptops and desktops that were available. At this point, I'm thinking about purchasing a laptop for several reasons that I won't go into here for various reasons. Amanda sees me looking at the laptops and asks me if I wanted to get one. After thinking about it for a while, I thought that it would be a good idea to get one.

Circuit City had an interesting deal going on for a Toshiba laptop (or portable has Toshiba calls them). There was a unit available for $600 after rebates. Now, as most people are already aware, I don't own a laptop of my own. I've always wanted one but couldn't justify the expense. Now I could ... especially at $600. So, I bought myself a laptop tonight.

Here's my new toy ...

Here's the specs of the unit:

- Intel Celeron M Processor
- 512MB RAM
- 60GB HD
- CD-RW/DVD-ROM
- 15.4" WXGA Monitor
- ATI Radeon Xpress 200M
- 802.11b/g wireless
- 10/100/1000 Ethernet
- Windows XP Home

Now, this isn't exactly the creme de la creme when it comes to laptops ... but the specs aren't too bad either. The memory, hard drive, video and monitor are very impressive to me. The only thing that I would like to see different is the processor, where I'm a big fan of the Centrino units from Intel. But, considering the price, you can't hardly beat the deal.

~out...

Posted by ed at February 14, 2006 10:38 PM

Comments

Let me help you with that new toy. Follow these simple steps, and you will really enjoy the new Tosh.

Step 1. Remove Windows, and destroy the restore media, if it came with any.

Step 2. Enjoy! (Ubuntu is a good choice.)

But you knew that already. That's what you're gonna do... Right???

Posted by: Troy Overton at February 15, 2006 09:55 AM

I brought an Ubuntu Live CD here with me at work today to see if it would pick up all the hardware. Unfortunately, I got an error when trying to read the CD. Personally, I think I got a bad batch of Live CD's from Ubuntu when I placed my original order a few months back. I guess I'll have to download another copy and give it a try again.

Posted by: eengelking at February 15, 2006 10:40 AM

Yeah, I have some cd's if you want. I'll drop you a line.
Plus, I got a new toy.. The Motorola i870 (Nextel)... SWEET. The 1GB chip is on the way, and it's already paired with my H500, Mac, and other "computers." Plays mp3 and everything...

Posted by: Troy Overton at February 15, 2006 12:43 PM

Aren't new toys great?

BTW ... On the Linux front ... it appears that I will need to do some extra work to get the laptop up and running. Apparently the video chipset is so new that the default ATI driver that comes with 99.9% of the distributions out there won't work with it. The only solution is to install Ubuntu directly to the drive, download the driver from ATI and install it.

Now, I just need to decide which distribution that I'm going to put on there. I'm leaning pretty heavy towards Suse at the moment...

Posted by: eengelking at February 15, 2006 02:10 PM

Since 10, Suse seems like they have gained quite a bit of steam again. Now that you can dl the soft for free, I think more Linux people will take a second look at it. I run Suse10 on my server, and I like it quite a bit. It's really smooth.

For a desktop system, Ubuntu is a great choice too. Ever since you found it and showed it to me, I have really liked it. It had no trouble finding wireless devices that I have used with it, (so far, knock on particle board) and that was teh only hangup I had with it...

Posted by: Troy Overton at February 15, 2006 03:43 PM

February 14, 2006

My new toy

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