The old laptop was dying -- it wouldn't hold the CMOS settings over night, and strange things would happen, like auto-wake at 00:00.  I couldn't get to the CMOS battery -- I didn't know the trick to opening the case.  Besides, the screen rez was only 800x600, and the wireless connectivity was provided by a dollar-three-ninety-eight USB stalk.  Oh, and the USB in the old thing was V1...

The new laptop is nothing special -- refurbished, Pentium IV 1.6G, 30G HD, 1024x768, BUILT-IN WIRELESS (Yay!) -- Basically the super-telephone/telegraph/communication box I need whilst at work...

...bought on e-bay from the leasing arm of a major computer manufacturer for the princely sum of $407 delivered to my door by DHL.

I've just finished with the first, important round of windows updates, installing anti-virus, etc.  And have Firefox installed and my favourite Susan's links bookmarked.

Now, as long as the car doesn't break down again, my bank account will recover fine 

Karen

I love new toys!  And I love the built in wireless.  I wired my house here with 5000 feet of multimedia cabling and hundreds of dollars worth of those stinking connectors.  And it turns out that all of the Cat 5 cable was for naught.  I use wireless phones and now wireless for the computers.  Oh yes.... I also installed fiber too.  I'm sure that will never get used.

Cindi

Oh Karen, believe me, I know the feeling.  Mine has been agonizing for the last two months, but it has not died yet.  I'll give myself a Christmas present this year.......a new laptop!!!


tinkerbell

Quote from: Cindianna_Jones on November 04, 2006, 02:58:14 PM

I use wireless phones and now wireless for the computers.

Be glad your uplink speed sux or I'd be out on the highway with a hi-gain antenna moochin' off your net 

-K

You'd have to come in on the property.... You can't pick up a signal from the highway. It's just too far away.

Cindi

Yay for new toys!    If you were nearby I could pop that battery for the CMOS out and then in.  The cases can be a pain but once you have done a few, all of them pretty much go the same way.

Not sure how much of a geek you are but you may want to try looking into the LiveCD versions for Mandrake and Xubuntu.  I have been having a bit of fun with those lately. 

Always secure your wireless, no matter how far you live from the road.  If someone hacks a bank account, you can be held liable for negligence.  Even if you beat the charge, it costs about $10K to get through a Grand Jury these days.

Quote from: LostInTime on November 06, 2006, 10:35:14 AM
Yay for new toys!    If you were nearby I could pop that battery for the CMOS out and then in.  The cases can be a pain but once you have done a few, all of them pretty much go the same way.

Not sure how much of a geek you are but you may want to try looking into the LiveCD versions for Mandrake and Xubuntu.  I have been having a bit of fun with those lately. 

Always secure your wireless, no matter how far you live from the road.  If someone hacks a bank account, you can be held liable for negligence.  Even if you beat the charge, it costs about $10K to get through a Grand Jury these days.

I love new toys as well.  I was always a SuSE Linux girl myself (no M$ for me) but this summer I bought my first mac, and all I can say is wow.

I have the 17" iMac, Wireless mouse and keyboard.  In fact the only cables that I use is the power cable and a usb cable to my printer, everything else is wireless.

Steph

I actually have SuSE 10.0 on my laptop.  Not as well done as say 9.3 but then again I am running a 64 bit environment and the support there really stinks.  ATI cards are known to cause problems (but the current Mandriva got it right out of the box) and I have a Broadcom wireless chipset and to say that chipset is a pain to get going is an understatement.  I totally expect to either go with Mandriva or one of the many different types of Ubuntu especially since M$ and Novell have now teamed up.

I would like to get a system up and running with Redhat or Suse.  Prior to moving here, I always had a system running some flavor of Unix or Linux.  I only want it because I want it.  I have no real reason to have one.  I just sort of miss it.

All the software I use runs on PC's so  there I am...

Cindi

I would suggest an OS that kicks ass.

But then again, Susan would probably ban me from the site as well for suggesting it.

Hint: It starts with "Free"

Quote from: LadySerena on November 06, 2006, 06:35:08 PM
I would suggest an OS that kicks ass.

But then again, Susan would probably ban me from the site as well for suggesting it.

Hint: It starts with "Free"

As in FreeBSD

Steph

..or how about an old OS that really kicked butt in the day--

Anybody remember AmigaOS?

Karen

Quote from: Karen on November 06, 2006, 10:23:30 PM
..or how about an old OS that really kicked butt in the day--

Anybody remember AmigaOS?

Karen

I know of an OS released in 1998, with its first x86 release in 1996, and a leak of its latest development version in 2001.

BeOS
1996 - BeOS R4 (PowerPC and first x86 release)
1998 - BeOS R5 (Personal Edition is free)
15 Nov 2001 - Be, Inc. acquired by Palm, Inc.  Be, Inc. is dissolved.  Disgruntled developer leaks much of Be's product line.  This includes BONE7a (version 7a of BONE - BeOS Networking Environment, a POSIX-compliant network stack to replace BeOS' net_server), BeOS Exp/Dano 5.1d0 - This was to become BeOS R6 and includes BONE7a, and BeIA - Be Internet Appliance, the slimmed down version of BeOS for embedded systems.  Between 1998 and 2001, Compaq sold nearly 500,000 units with BeIA.  BeIA was designed for web kiosks.

But, BeOS lives on!  Haiku (formerly OpenBeOS) is working on a BeOS source and binary compatible system.  Haiku is, essentially, an Open Source recreation of BeOS.  BeOS was perhaps the most advanced OS of its time.

Be - Be Different.

To show my age a bit:

I used to tutor someone on the COBOL programming language.

The place also offered training in FORTRAN and later on, Pascal.

Oh and a FreeBSD Live CD to try out is Frenzy.

Quote from: Karen on November 06, 2006, 10:23:30 PM
..or how about an old OS that really kicked butt in the day--

Anybody remember AmigaOS?

Karen

My first computer was a TRS 80, followed by a VIC20   The only language that I learned was BASIC.

Steph