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BrandonMerry XMas to Me!
Well after selling my macbook and xmas gifts, I had a few hundred dollars, and needed a new laptop. I chose the Gateway EC1433u, with a 11.6" 1366x768 screen, small but with a high enough resolution to get work done, a 10watt Celeron CPU, which should lead to long battery life and performance equal to a Pentium 4, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, which is overkill really, and best of all an Intel Wifi card so I don't have to worry about making Linux work. Once it comes I plan to get out my old external drive and install Ubuntu 9.04 which I'll customize with a lighter WM. I also got a Belkin bag for it and a cheap PS/2 optical mouse for use with older machines, and a new 4GB Flash Drive, maybe I'll retire my old 512 to running Tinycore? :P Then I got some stuff for my desktop, currently the specs are: Phenom X4 9650,4gb DDR2 RAM, Nvidia 6600 (I know its old, but it works with all OSes, and can handle Compiz fine),250GB HDD,DVD-RW,550watt PSU, all of that sounds pretty beasty right? Well the speakers are an old 2.1 set from a beige Gateway desktop, and the monitor is a flat screen CRT with a max res of 1280x1024. I decided it was time for an upgrade, being a Logitech fanboy I got a 5.1 set, Logitech X-540, and I found a refurb 19" Gateway LCD with a max resolution of 1440x900 for $90 with free shipping. That's right your admin is going back to Linux as his primary OS :)		2009-12-281:58 PM
ToddRe:Merry XMas to Me!
Did you ever try Debian 5? I prefer Debian over Ubuntu mainly because it's slightly faster and still has all the stuff you'd find in Ubuntu.		2009-12-284:25 PM
BrandonRe:Merry XMas to Me!
I might consider using it, I usually just use Ubuntu because it's so easy, but you are right Debian is lighter and should run any software, the only reason I don't use it more is it has (in my opinion/experience) worse wireless support then Ubuntu. The laptop I'm using until my new one comes is a Gateway Solo 5300, P3 700, 256MB RAM with a Belkin USB card. It as a hacked up ubuntu with openbox or something but it was too slow, so I installed Puppy and firefox 3.5+pidgin. Firefox would get bogged down, so I installed flashblock and it works flawlessly. All hail flashblock :P		2009-12-284:52 PM
BrandonRe:Merry XMas to Me!
Everything came and works well. The laptop is perfect, everything is supported under Ubuntu, including all the fn controls, the webcam, the wireless, ethernet, screen, and sound! For $400, it's a nice little laptop with Win7 and Ubuntu.		2009-12-303:35 PM
ToddRe:Merry XMas to Me!
Is it dual-booting? Or do you run Windows 7 under VirtualBox or some emulator?		2009-12-305:43 PM
BrandonRe:Merry XMas to Me!
Dual Booting, I had an issue with GRUB, so I'm reinstalling everything, but I'll end up running Win7 and/or Ubuntu 9.10.		2009-12-307:12 PM

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