My old laptop had become soooo slow. Even after completely reinstalling Windows XP, but hardly any other software (yes, a browser, office suite, and a few more), it still seemed ten times as slow as when I bought it. I blame Windows for that; obviously XP is not what it was five years ago.

Anyway, I searched around, mainly at laptopshop.nl, and was about to order an Acer (Aspire 5738G, to be precise), when I saw that Dell had a discount on the Studio 15. The specs were similar to the Acer and now the price was almost the same as well. I chose the Dell.

The main specs are:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 (2.1 GHz)
• 4 GB DDR2 memory
• 320 GB 7200 rpm SATA hard disk
• 512 MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics card
• 15.6″ widescreen display (1366 × 768)
• DVD +/- RW drive
• Integrated webcam
• 9-cell 85W battery

The only thing that bothers me, not just with this one, but with similar laptops as well, is the low resolution of the display. Even the one I am working on right now, which is five years old, has a 15″ display with 1400 × 1050 pixels. If you want something like that right now (1440 × 900), you have to go for at least a 17″ display, or be willing to spend some more money on a Sony Vaio.

Anyway, if all goes well, my new laptop will be delivered next Wednesday.

Update (2009-7-22): my laptop has arrived. This afternoon, two packages were delivered at my door:

Some first impressions, after working with it for a couple of hours:

• Microsoft sure did a great job in creating the most annoying piece of software ever with User Account Control (UAC).
• Vista takes some time getting used to. Yes, I was still running XP on my old laptop.
• The first thing to go was the Windows Sidebar. The second was the Dell Dock. Yippee for all the free Dell software you get pre-installed on your machine.
• I already mentioned the screen resolution. The widescreen is nice, but the vertical size is quite limited, which is most obvious while browsing or working with digital photos. BTW, where did this resolution of 1366 × 768 come from?
• The battery life, so far, is great. The extra large 9-cell battery has worked for about 5 hours, although I haven’t actually measured it exactly. But even when it was at 0%, it kept working for another 15 minutes!
• Finally, this laptop is quite a lot faster than my old one! But then again, it would be strange if it wasn’t.

Before I went to pick up the hard disk, yesterday, I also (finally!) bought a digital camera. I ordered the Canon Powershot A620 at Digicamshop.nl. It was delivered this morning (at no cost) and it looks very good. I’m anxious to see it in action. And of course, you will probably see some pictures here, now and then…

Anyway, when your computer boots with no keyboard attached, you get an error like this:

Keyboard error: press <F1> to continue or <F2> to enter setup.

Please tell me how!

Let’s hope this will keep me from running out of memory so often…

It has taken quite some time, because the laptops were held back at the customs for a few weeks. As a compensation De-Laptopper offered a choice of a few free accesories. I chose the free upgrade from 2*256 MB to 1*512 MB of memory (which I had ordered anyway for 49 euros).

Unfortunately, they still have to deliver the upgrade from 11 Mbps (802.11b) to 54 Mbps (802.11g) WLAN.
Furthermore, they’ve only given me 256 MB of memory, so they still have to send me the 512 MB DIMM.
And finally, because the 7200 rpm 60 GB harddisk wasn’t available, they put a 5400 rpm in instead. But they upgraded the processor from 1.6 to 1.7 GHz! So now I have to choose: 1.6 GHz processor with a 7200 rpm drive, or 1.7 GHz with a 5400 rpm drive? Does anyone have any good suggestions what to choose?

Update (March 26): This morning I took my laptop back to De-Laptopper, to have my processor and harddisk replaced. So now I’ve got what I ordered: a 1.6 GHz processor and a 7200 rpm 60 GB harddisk. They have very kindly cloned my old harddisk to this new one, so no problems whatsoever.
Furthermore, they installed the 802.11g (54 Mbps) WLAN upgrade and exchanged the 1x 256 MB by 1x 512 MB 333 MHz DDR SDRAM, also just as I had ordered. So, my laptop is finally complete, in just under 5 weeks!

I’ve got it all set up, connected the wires and splitter and stuff. It’s a bit tricky at our place, because we have a home switchboard (for 1 external and 4 internal phone lines) and separate lines for the modems (because the “ancient” switchboard cannot handle the modem signals). So I have placed the splitter before the switchboard, and used the separate modem line for the ADSL signal. The one cable going to the second floor has two wires for one of the internal phone lines and two wires for the ADSL line.

I configured my pc and the SMC 7204BRA 4-port Router / ADSL Modem (see here, on page 2) and it all works great in Windows 98.
I still have to install the Realtek network card under Debian, but that shouldn’t be any problem.

I wanted to connect another pc to the Router, and therefore had to lay 15 meters of UTP cable, through the ceiling, through a wall. I fixed the connectors to the cable… and found out it didn’t work. I checked the connectors, removed one of them and attached a new one, but it still doesn’t work! Does anyone know a (cheap and simple) way to check a UTP cable?

I finally did it! I’ve bought a laptop!
This morning I ordered the ASUS M6000N with

• Intel Centrino 1.6 GHz processor
• 1 x 512 MB 333 MHz DDR SDRAM
• 60 GB 7200 rpm 2.5″ UDMA 100 HDD
• ATI M10 (Mobility Radeon 9600) 64 MB DDR
• 15.1″ SXGA+ (1400 x 1050)
• 5.25″ ATAPI 24X/24X/8X/24X DVD/CDRW combo drive
• on-board 10/100/1000 Mbps Fast Ethernet controller
• integrated 802.11 b/g module
• … and much more!

at De Laptopper.

I’ll keep you informed..