New laptop

[daacosta]

Just purchased this:

Inspiron B130, Intel Celeron M370 (1.50GHz/1MB Cache/400MHz FSB)
40GB Ultra-ATA Hard Drive, forInspiron 1300
1GB,DDR2,533MHz,2 DIMM, for Inspiron 1300
Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, for Inspiron 1300/B130
15.4 inch WXGA Display, for Inspiron B130
Microsoft Windows XP Home Service Pack 2, English, for Inspiron

I will not eliminate MS Windows from this computer because there are some chess programs that I happen to like and enjoy that do not run in Linux (Please... Do not tell me about Wine... I am not interested) My idea is to buy a portable USB Drive (100 GB... I still need to research this...) and load it with Linux... (Haven't decided which distro... Perhaps Ubuntu 5.10...)

This thing is even better than my desktop at home which will be used for other things...

[ImNeat]

Sounds nice.
Wanna buy another and send it my way? =)

[Apollo]

Just purchased this:

Inspiron B130, Intel Celeron M370 (1.50GHz/1MB Cache/400MHz FSB)
40GB Ultra-ATA Hard Drive, forInspiron 1300
1GB,DDR2,533MHz,2 DIMM, for Inspiron 1300
Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, for Inspiron 1300/B130
15.4 inch WXGA Display, for Inspiron B130
Microsoft Windows XP Home Service Pack 2, English, for Inspiron

I will not eliminate MS Windows from this computer because there are some chess programs that I happen to like and enjoy that do not run in Linux (Please... Do not tell me about Wine... I am not interested) My idea is to buy a portable USB Drive (100 GB... I still need to research this...) and load it with Linux... (Haven't decided which distro... Perhaps Ubuntu 5.10...)

This thing is even better than my desktop at home which will be used for other things...

40GB isn't huge, but its big enough for a dual boot, with a small linux partition if you plan on using Windows as your primary OS. I had Ubuntu running for a month on a disk partiton of something like 13 GB, and still had loads of space left. Nice laptop btw, I'd love to have a speedy little laptop to go along with my dekstops.

[onlinebacon]

So would I

Although, I bet there are some nice chess games for linux though

[daacosta]

So would I

Although, I bet there are some nice chess games for linux though

There are some cool chess engines around that can run on top of Winboard (Windows Xboard's version for linux) but not on Xboard. Some of them include: ruffian, crafty, yace, etc. I need really strong chess engines for my needs and quite honestly it is far easier to configure those on Winboard than on Xboard. Furthermore, making the engines work with SCID (http://scid.sourceforge.net/) has proven difficult for me on linux (Since this kind of problem is too specific, I haven't ran at the forums crying for help... It is just a very unique situation...)

This program is also crucial for me: Chess Position Trainer (http://www.chesspositiontrainer.com/) Unfortunately the guy doesn't want to GPL it or provide a version for Linux. This one really hurt me because I absolutely love it... It is the absolute best for training chess openings...

I managed to make SCID run on my computer and in fact it is in Ubuntu's repository. Chessbase light was also a favorite of mine but it doesn't run on linux...

Ah! And those tablebases for endgames? Haven't been able to configure them with Linux... Adding my big incompetence in linux to the above yields that I haven't been able to reproduce my old chess studying set-up in Windows using Linux... I am quite sure it can be done except for that chess position trainer (what a program!)

[irasmith]

Daacosta,

Congrads on the new purchase, anytime one acquires new computing hardware is a time to celebrate in my book

I think you will like your selection of laptop computer very much. I have an almost identical match to the one you outlined. We differ in memory, I have less at 512 meg, I have XP Pro, and hard drive size, I have a 60 gig one.

I purchased mine right after Thanksgiving as a treat to myself for a very hard year last year. It arrived just before Christmas and I have been using it heavily ever since. I use mine for development work, both MS based and non-MS based.

I wish you many happy hours with your laptop. If I can offer one suggestion, I personally would not sit it directly on soft surfaces such as cloth or other flexible type fabrics. The fans for it are on the very bottom and I don't feel comfortable putting soft materials under it. I bought a lap desk type unit at the local computer store on sale that does great. It was not very expensive and allows a hard surface under the laptop bottom so that it can get air to keep cool.

[daacosta]

It just arrived! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I got a new laptop! I got a new laptop! I got a new laptop!

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

OK, I need to go to Borders to set it up