Ubuntu

Here is what downtown Bellingham looks like around 3:30pm when the daylight starts to fade and one stops getting sidetracked by work things and heads out to drop off (late) a video and remembers to take a camera on the ride to a coffee shop to finish a flurry of e-mails in a day of feeling like little got done. This is Cornwall Avenue looking south.

But today I spec'd out a new Dell laptop. My old Dell died and I don't have enough jack for an Apple notebook. Yes, I just got a new Think Pad for work, but I will need another laptop for my personal use.

Problem is, I do not feel like having to deal with Windows. Microsot Windows sucks. And the new Vista comes standard on most Dells - to 'downgrade' to the more stable XP you need to pay Microsoft an extra hundred bucks to overinstall its better, older version, that it won't even support after the year's end. This is entirely ridiculous. And I think twenty years of having to use shoddy products put out by Microsoft is enough.

So my other Dell option is to use the new Linux operating system called Ubuntu. From reviews I've read, it's a good match for this computer and should be out-of-the-box ready. But I hope that I am not biting off more than I can chew. I am not a big tech person, nor do I have the time to devote to making things work on the computer like when I tried to load Mandrake or Red Hat years back. But I am sure that you will hear about it.