My effort to trade the eMac for a laptop has paid off. Today I received via FedEx a Dell Inspiron 4100. Yes, it’s old, with a mere 1Ghz CPU, and I’m having to order RAM to make it a half-GB. Thank God it’s cheap right now.
I’m not going to play with this thing and a hundred Linux distros. I can only tolerate a few, and from those I insist on long-term support. I tried Ubuntu 8.04.2 because of the LTS, but it wouldn’t get past the initial splash. It sat there churning and churning for several minutes but never actually worked. Xubuntu installed, but simply could not find my sound, nor my CD player. The touchpad was really cranky, and required a pretty hard tap to get any response. I tried several other distros I might tolerate, but I lost interest after the first three. It’s just too much work, and it’s not fun any more.
I’m putting Win2K on it, because the other fellow had a copy with a license. Dell offers drivers for that version, so we are set. It’s updating right now — I prefer to use AutoPatcher. Tomorrow I’ll be shipping the eMac off by FedEx and wish the man all the best. I still think I got the best end of the deal.
