Yours truly has acquired a new “Christmas” laptop. This isn’t the perfect choice. The ideal solution would be to run my old laptop for fifty years, until such time as its repeatedly repaired and rebuilt chassis dissolves into rust just as the aliens and zombies swarm my compound on Mars and I deploy my EMP Pulse weapon that fries anything more advanced than a toaster; thus hailing the beginning of a new era where the highest technology is the moldboard plow. Unfortunately, I live in reality. I don’t have time for Quixotic challenges and lack a Martian outpost.
My old laptop, despite being only four years old, was exhibiting every trait of planned obsolescence. It was running exclusively on external drives, failing to boot with alarming regularity, and had a battery life of zero. It has been begging for a graceful retirement for three months. I granted it. This is the sane solution.
The timing is problematic. Normally I’d run from any purchase around Christmas. Some paint huffing yahoo is going to see that I spent money in December and use it to justify ever earlier Christmas commercialism. Sorry folks, when you see Christmas advertisements during the Superbowl, my new laptop contributed to it.
My idea was to replace the decrepit beast I’ve been using and tinker with its replacement over the Holiday. Ideally I’ll have the shiny new setup running in time for my 2015 New Year’s Resolution to “get my electronic shit together”. So far, no dice.
Like the early Fords which “come in any color you want so long as it’s black”, the laptops in my price range come with “Windows installed good and hard“. The Curmudgeonly side of my brain is cursing the insanity of it all. The Adaptive side chose to adapt by thinking of something better to do… which is anything.
So until such time as I get this high tech nightmare running a proper OS you won’t be hearing much from me. I can login to WordPress in Win 8.1 but by the time I’ve run the gauntlet of Microsoft’s BS I don’t feel like writing. See? Bill Gates hates my blog.
The blog may be on it’s own for a while. How long? It might be hours, it might be days, who knows? All I can say is that I got liquor for Christmas and sitting around the fire doing nothing is mighty attractive. Merry Christmas y’all.
DBAN + Linux Mint install disk = problem solved. 🙂
Problem will be solved once that’s done; but it ‘aint done yet.
Good luck, godspeed, and Happy New Year. Let’s hope you can read this while it’s still 2014. BTW, I LOATH Win 8. I still have a machine that runs Win 3.1. If it ain’t broke, keep it.
What is the appropriate OS for a curmudgeon?
I’ve been using Ubuntu and am planning on Mint. Right now I’m mired in Win8.1… what a shithole.
This works well for me:
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
in Windows when resizing partitions to install dual-boot after cleaning the Gatesian stables. I usually set up one partition for Windows, a second partition for data that can be shared by Windows and Linux (format NTFS so Bill can read and write), a third partition for the Linux OS, and a Linux swap partition.
I’m using Mint Linux with Cinnamon desktop at home, my workbench laptop has Mint with Mate. Both dual boot Win 7. I liked Ubuntu until the Unity interface came along, IMHO it’s as bad as Win 8/8.1. But that’s a geek Holy War better fought elsewhere.
Have y’all looked at Trinity:
TrinityDesktop.org
Largely a Windows interface (especially if you make those choices as you boot the first time) over Ubuntu.
Do you ABSOLUTELY have to run Windows for any work that you do? Ubuntu 14.04.1 runs nicely on laptops, and can read and write Microsoft Office files, including the old .doc as well as the docx and their spreadsheet and powerpoint equivalents. I’ve been installing it on my friend’s computers for quite some time now, and it’s amazing how much fewer problem calls I get.
I do dual boot.
And a good solution that is. I’m sure you’re familiar with CCleaner or other such for the Gates’ partition.
try installing Classic Shell over windows 8.1 it will make look and feel like Windows 7
Chromebook, already running Linux.