Changing of the machine
I read somewhere that nature abhors a vacuum. Well, my nature abhors the vacuum of a day without some computer challenge. Some people like things to simply work; that’s not how I see the world. Today, my new laptop arrived, and within the first hour I managed to change its working model to something that more closely fits my way of doing things. Multiboot.
The machine is a Dell Studio 17, in a bright green that reminds me of a certain T-shirt I once had back at UPEI (the colour IS green, after all). My choice, so we’ll say nothing and move right along. The physical size is large; much too large for my computer bag, so I’ll be shopping. I will adjust to the glossy screen, since matte seems to be gone from the catalogue of the laptop manufacturing clique. The key is multiboot.
I’ve received a machine preloaded with Vista Home Premium SP1. My XP world is called to change with the times, and I have enough experience to get over the new dialogue screens. No major angst attack. Better is that my Linux Mint 5 (she calls herself Elyssa) simply loaded up after the necessary change in BIOSville, and installed in the space I’d recovered (Vista shrinks itself, news at eleven). So far, the basics are in place; I’ll fight with the wireless demons after I’ve rested up. Sound, screen, touchpad, Ethernet; no challenge there.
Given that my Linux partition is VERY LARGE, I’ll be virtualizing XP Pro there, rather than under the Vista porch. There’s already a short queue formed to liberate my old laptop, so I probably have a little under a week to get years of accumulated config functional on another machine. Firefox has some wonderful addons now; the transfer of bookmarks and saved passwords was as simple as saying “please”. Right now I have a small FTP family in place, so that the My Documents will be in place right away. I might even show off the new machine tomorrow.
