Yesterday I went out and purchased a Dell Latitude 610. I had a variety of reasons. You can read some of them on my post over at my Apple site, "Applepeels." Aside from being addicted to technology gadgets, I really felt like I needed a Windows laptop to fit into my work environment. I still love my Macs but it is just undeniable that there are very few Macs in the business world.
After getting the Windows part of the machine up and going which included installing Norton Anti-virus, I decided to not wait for the Suse 10.0 that I have on order. I went ahead and installed Suse 9.3 with Gnome desktop this morning. As far as I can tell the installation went flawlessly with a couple of small exceptions.
The trackpad seems very sensitive, and surprise, surprise I'm having some trouble getting the wireless capability configured.
I'm sure I will figure it out, but the machine is set up to use GRUB and offers me the opportunity to boot into Windows XP if I need to do so.
It took a long time to do all the updates, but that's not surprising with a new release just around the corner. So far the system seems very snappy, and I'll look forward to reporting my Linux experiences with it.
Things have come a long way since last fall when I struggled to get Linux up and running on my Dell desktop because of a SATA drive controller problem. I recorded my Linux journey in some of my early posts, "The Linux Saga Continues," "Some Hope," and "SATA Success."
At least this time installing Linux didn't blow up my Windows installation like it did then.
Linux
Something you might consider if it's practical for you is turning your notebook into your desktop. In my case I had two notebooks and a desktop computer and it was mildly frustrating to manage files among all three. To help mitigate this I purchased a 21" LCD monitor, and the Microsoft bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. I set my desktop replacement notebook off to the side of my desk, and plug the monitor into the notebook. Next I plug my bluetooth usb adapter into the notebook. Now I've got a desktop computer with none of the ergonomic problems of a notebook computer, and when I need to hit the road, I simply unplug the external monitor and the bluetooth adapter and go. I've used this setup for four months and it's been wonderful.
Sean.
Posted by: Sean Pecor | September 29, 2005 at 06:33 AM
Actually I ended up plugging the Windows Laptop into my KVM switch which has turned out to work very well. I now can easily flip between my Linux desktop and ny Windows laptop. Getting to Windows without having to reboot will likely mean that I become more familiar with Windows. My only problem now is that I have to switch desks if I want to use my desktop Mac. Of course I end up using the flat panel display and regular keyboard with the laptop which as you said is very nice.
Since I'm doing most of my stuff on the web or through e-mail keeping things synchronized isn't very much of a problem. I do all of my photos on the Macs so it is all working out well. I wrote a couple of posts on the Dell laptop today, one of them for my Apple site, so it was good to get the experience. I finally stuck Office on the laptop so now I'll be ready for presentations also.
Posted by: ocracokewaves | September 29, 2005 at 11:13 PM