New Laptop

Well I sold the old laptop and my tower. I used the funds to purchase a new laptop. I bought an Acer Aspire 5630-6459. It came preloaded with Windows Vista Premium. I had a a look around the new OS for about a week and decided I was not willing to be a Microsoft Beta tester. I was amazed to find that MS's own messenger would not work. Each time I tried to start it I got a DEP error message. And several of the software programs I use would not work. So..... I did a reload with a clean re-install of Vista with all the stock software that came preloaded and burned a DVD image file of the setup. Then wiped the whole thing With Gparted and put a fresh install of XP did all the updates and loaded all the software I need for photography. Then I installed a copy of Mint Linux 2.2 "Bianca" in a dual boot setup. I must say this Bianca is a very nice distro. An off shoot from Ubuntu. Just full of Open Source goodness. I will re-install Vista at some time but not until the first service pack is released. Right now I am pretty happy with this setup. I am quite pleased with the performance of the Core 2 Duo chip. I have been a AMD guy for years but thought to try the new Intel chip. Time will tell. I am going to try setting this up as a complete tournament setup with a second monitor. I will keep you posted.