QC #891. Gotta love Jeph.

On that note, I’ve
Big news is that my old HP tower died, utterly and completely. This was the box that ran the TLMS server before I migrated over to WISP Centric- once again, thanks Kory! I think motherboard got corrupted- the PCI bus has been flickering for some time, so I’m not surprised by a mobo failure. (I’m not getting power to the keyboard or mouse [PS/2 and USB, respectively] or a signal to the monitor.) I used another computer to scrounge up the data from the hard drive- which was untouched, but the box itself is dead. But! Today, a brand-spanking-new dv6700t arrived on my doorstep. Specs:

Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7250 @ 2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache
2GB DDR2 system memory
160GB SATA HDD @ 5400 rpm
nVidia GeForce 8400M GS with 256MB of dedicated graphics memory, powering a WXGA (1280×800) 15.4 in display
Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Wireless card
SuperMulti 8x double-layer DVD+/-R/RW Drive
and the 12 cell battery that sticks out the back.

I’ll do an unboxing (with pix!) tonight, hopefully- look for another post tomorrow. Probably going to wait until tomorrow to do the full setup as well- repartitioning for a dual-boot. Sorry, Bill, but I just don’t trust Vista. The plan is to have three main partitions- RED, PURPLE, and BLUE. RED will be the original partition, but downsized to 40 gigs. Red=conservative=Windows (NTFS). Blue=liberal=open-source Ubuntu (20 gigs of ext3, actually a little less due to the swap partition). PURPLE will be the remaining 100 gigs, formatted FAT32, shared between the two sides.

The fun thing to do with this can, in part, be drawn from a MaximumPC article from a year or two ago, called “Dual-Booting with Finesse”. I’m going to mount directory on PURPLE to my Linux /home directory, and do what I can to replace the user directory on Vista (at least a shortcut under the My Documents folder). I know that I can share my Firefox profile (just add the –ProfileManager tag from the console) and my music; I also wound up with a single install for open-source games like OpenArena and Tremulous, by putting both system binaries in the same directory, thus sharing the more bulky resource files.

If you know of any good sites for backgrounds, let me know. I’m actually going to be using a sort of awkward resolution- when I’m at a home setup, I’m going to have my old 1024×768 monitor sitting next to the 1280×800 laptop, running from the same vid card. I’m not going to mirror them, though- does Vista let you set different backgrounds per display? (I guess I’ll find out when I get home.)

Any suggestions for must-have software on either side, drop off. Other than that, have a nice day!

I got an iPod touch in the mail yesterday. It’s very nice. I’ll try to be brief- NUMB3RS is on.

Pros:
It’s beautiful. Interface, style, sound quality (so far as I can tell). My own experience with the keyboard has been very positive, though I should mention it’s a lot easier in landscape mode. Very nice music interface; Safari is a neat feature, but I wouldn’t want to use it for most of my browsing.

Cons: There are actually quite a few, but none deal-breakers. The double-click Home doesn’t work for Cover Flow, so you have to turn it rightside up to change volume. Battery life was not as long as was claimed; I used music and WiFi sparingly throughout the day, but only totalled about 10 hours (on time).

So there are good things and bad, and though I didn’t really say too much, it definitely is worth something (if not as much as they sell for).

Title from Questionable Content.  Check it out.