#8 I sold out.

Well well well, what do you know? Latest version of Ubuntu = win, latest version on Windows = fail.

Installing Ubuntu was exceptionally easy thanks to the ever-present Live CD. Start up from the CD first, confirm all systems are go, then click, 'install to disk'. Why, why, why, can windows not do that? I could have saved myself a shite load of bother in the first place!

Ubuntu is cool although I did have a little issue with the GRand Universal Boot loader, the little worm decided my HDD didn't exist, even though the GRUB is stored there. Oh well, that is par for the course with open source I suppose. The great thing is, even though it has only been out for 2 weeks or somethin ridiculous, there are already others out there who have even less of a life than me, and even more old rotting hardware to play around with, who have already encountered, 'forumed', received advice about, tested and found solutions for, the same problems I encountered. So really, there are no problems, just temporary annoyances...
So, long story short, Linux is cool, it has given my 7-year old hardware a new lease on life, it now runs a brand new OS, rather than one that is 7 years old! There's more to come here, as I get into Linux I will endeavour to push the boundaries to re-format inducing levels, and see what kind of trouble me and my new best friend 'sudo' can get into together! (sudo make me a coffee!)
That is not what I am most excited about however. What I am most excited about is my purty little Tabatha! Windows 7 continues to run very well on this ancient platform. So well that I have made it my official "best old tech"machine. I made it official with a quaint tea-drinking and RAM-upgrading ceremony, where I transplanted the symbol of 'best old tech" soverignty, my 1GB, 333MHz RAM stick from Maja the Laptop to Tabatha the Tablet. And then drank some tea.

As a quick aside, I now think both machines run better, possibly due to the fact that both now have same-speed RAM in both slots? If anyone knows if that's realistic I'd be interested to find out.

Anyway, back to Tabatha, I have tested pretty much every program I want to run from it (except Diablo II, watch this space) and have been satisfied entirely. The only gripe I really have is that my HDD isn't big enough.

But wait, I thought, I have a 250GB drive sitting in my Laptop, largely empty as it has a fresh install on Ubuntu on it, couldn't I stick that in the Tablet?

No, it is old, and BIOS will only address the first 137GB of the disk. A quick google search later confirmed that that's not a problem as long as you have 2 partitions, the first of which has to be less than 137GB. Sweeeeet. This has pretty much made my mind up for me. I am going to buy Windows 7, and install it on a very, very old computer... Again.

So the largely free & open Source project has completely about-turned. Perhaps, since lappy is now running Ubuntu I could try out that as an open-source platform. And, as I've now spent $75 on a DVD Drive for Tabatha, & the RAM I put in cost $100 not 3 months ago, you can't really say it's free any more, can you?

Next Step: Installing office 2OO7: Wish me luck.

#7 The grass is not greener, you're colour-blind.

So, I have a new pinch of salt to add to my praise of Windows 7.

To start from somewhere after the start, I recently tried to install W7 in a dual boot scenario on my HP Compaq nx7000 and got a winload.exe failure after reboot. A quick google showed many people have reported the same error trying to dual boot vista on my machine.

Step back a little way, before I attempted this, indeed before Windows 7 even came out, I ran the compatibility checker. The only significant thing it told me was my WLAN driver would need to be downloaded separately, and that Aero etc wouldn't work. The thing came out in 2004, no surprises there!

So I booted back into xp and copied off my files, then used GParted to format the drive. Fingers crossed at this stage cos I just wiped my HDD hoping that the reason I couldn't continue with set up was the dual boot thing.

Turns out I was right, and set up continues with only W7 installed… But, and this is a big 'but', it turns out, W7 is not compatible with my Machine's graphics or WLAN card. Sweet as, I don't need better res than 700x560, and who needs wireless these days, the internet is overrated…

So I spent about a day looking on the net for different drivers, I even emailed HP, who kindly sent me an email back, stating my machine is not compatible with W7. Oarsome. Thanks a bunch Windows Compatibility Checker, you wouldn't know if Windows was compatible with yo' momma's left titty.

After trying everything I could think of, I decided the best course of action was to install GNU/Linux. So I chose Ubuntu Karmic Koala (and yes, before you ask, when I the time comes, I will probably install Lesbian Llama).

I'll update you on how the ubuntu install goes soon. In the meantime, here's a list of things I've learned up to today:

• Sometimes, even when you are confident you know what you are doing, you don't.
• Emo kids with bright orange hair who mutter 'Death' under their breath as you walk past them are infinitely less preferable to the ones who busk outside the supermarket singing, 'I don't know what I'm doing wrong' songs (am I a bad person because the first thing I thought to do was tell him to cut down the wrist, and not across it?)
• Commander Sulu has a really, really cool voice: "Actually it's my first attempt."
• In order to re-crystalise the lithium in my laptop battery I just need to steal some photons from a nuclear reactor, preferably from the US(N)S Enterprise.