So for the heck of it, I thought it was high time I explored things outside of the Microsoft bubble, and therefore decided to get myself a laptop running Linux.
Did the usual internet search for Linux based laptops but found that the only ones available were custom ones that were pretty expensive. Dell had one for $579, but overall wasn't too impressed with the specs.
So I decided to get a cheap regular Windows-based laptop, and convert it to Linux. A random visit to the local Staples store revealed a bunch of HP laptops for less than $500. I finally decided on the HP DV6-3010US which has a dual-core AMD CPU, with 4 GB of RAM and more diskspace than I'll ever need.
I'll do another blog post that provides details on converting the laptop to Linux, but overall it was a breeze!
The laptop is now running Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), is connected over wireless (which took a bit to setup), with a few apps I installed later like Eclipse for development purposes.
On the whole I'm pretty impressed with Ubuntu. Happily, Ubuntu's borrowed many of Windows GUI and usability aspects, so using the OS was easy enough.
A quick note on the HP DV6-3010US. Without a doubt it's a cheap laptop, and the cheapness is very evident in the quality of the materials used for the laptop (think Kia or Hyundai quality years ago). The processing horsepower with memory is decent enough, though. The most irritating part of the laptop is the mouse-pad which is close to impossible to use, and if you touch it wrong, does all sorts of wacky things (like suddenly highlighting and deleting all your text as you type). I clearly need to get a wireless (or wired) mouse before the mouse-pad drives me nuts.
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