The Dave Blog

I finally purchased a notebook to replace the two I already have that were no longer functioning as notebooks. One had a busted fan (that used to rattle when it actually tried to spin and hence, its hostname is rattles) and the other has a busted graphics adapter. Both machines have their hinges broken so I can’t really sit the screen up. However, they are both “usable” in that I can leave them running with an ssh daemon and ssh into them. Unfortunately, the heat of Rattles due to the broken fan would cause the processor pain and forget compiling things on it because that would take forever. The other notebook is still good and I use it as my jukebox right now.

My new notebook is a Dell Inspiron 1525 with the Intel Pentium Dual Core T2390 processor and 2GB of RAM. I bought it from Best Buy Honolulu and unfortunately, they only had one where the Geek Squad “optimised” it, which cost an additional $30. The notebook’s original price was $500 so altogether, I paid around $550 including taxes. It’s a pretty good purchase to me considering the value and what I plan to use the notebook for.

Of course, the first thing I did when I got home was resized the Windows partition and installed Linux on the larger of the two partitions. I have yet to actually use Windows on it to see what the Geek Squad really did… I’ll eventually get to it. So far I’m enjoying this notebook. As for Linux support, and in particular, Ubuntu 8.04, everything worked — which was one of the reasons why I targeted Dell since I am aware of them being friendly with the Ubuntu crowd. However, the wireless adapter only started working after an update but otherwise, everything is working fine!

Another plus for me is that the notebook comes with all the OEM install media so if I choose to wipe out the partitions and start over, I can easily do so!