Friday, November 21, 2008

New computer


Yes. I bought it just before going to Poland. The old FSC V2020 (pilgrim) is mostly unusable because one of the hinges is broken. It seems to be a common flaw for all FSCs.

I acted in a rush and I have started a quick selection for a replacement. The candidates were:
1. Lenovo SL300

2. Lenovo T400

3. Toshiba U400-13k

4. Dell Vostro 1310

The criteria I have chosen were:
1. Size - ideally 13.3" but 14.1" ok
2. Weight - maximum 2.2 kg
3. Performance - the best possible processor (2GHz or better) and a fair amount of memory(over 2 GB)
4. Features (webcam, card reader, modem, PCMCIA, eSATA, fingerprint reader, etc.)
5. Warranty - 2 years at least. Last one had one year but resisted for four.
6. Look - moder but not bling-bling.

As I am not a big fan of games an onboard video was enough in all cases.
Although I like Lenovo, I have chosen Toshiba because was the one that scored highest in all the
criteria. For sure there were also some other candidates as MacBook and Dell XPS that were very appealing. The idea was to keep the budget in a reasonably range. Mr. Kadas told me once that the technology would already surpass you in the very moment you have payed for it. Therefore Why invest in such a perishable thing as technology? I would have really liked an Apple for the fact that they are doing great hardware but I will wait for the new shiny aluminum cased mac - maybe somewhere next year. IBM are renown for their quality finish and good magnesium cases and hinges but it seems that the newer T and SE series are really just plastic.

The fun came when I tried to install Ubuntu 8.10. The installation went okay - the guts from Canonical really improved the installer a lot.
Still I had problems with the Intel 5100ABGN wireless card. I have solved them by installing compat-wireless package.

I will start loading the new toy (its name is marauder) with all the things I have been using on the other (eclipse, Geronimo, Glassfish, Yate, Asterisk) and lots of others as I am very anxious to see how are they behaving on a 64bits system.

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