12.01.2007
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Don says:
I recently purchased a used Windows XP Pro machine on eBay for $125.00. Most of our ezine readers use Windows so Lisa and I both feel we should have a Windows machine but Windows will no longer be my primary operating system. My "new" computer is about two years old now and it came with Windows 2000 Pro SP4 because, at the time, I flatly refused to buy XP. The only reason I was willing to buy a used XP machine is because Windows 2000 Pro SP4 is getting close to it's EOL (End Of Life), so it won't be supported any longer, and because I was able to get the whole machine for a few dollars more than a new copy of Windows XP. Yeah, that's right; a new copy of Windows XP is about $100 on amazon.com and, keeping the law of supply and demand in mind, it might interest you to know that a new copy of Windows Vista is selling for just under $50. Isn't that interesting? I certainly found it so.Anyway, as soon as I had the new-to-me XP machine tested and tweaked I installed Debian Etch on my existing Win2K machine and I'm very happy with it. In fact, I'm typing this document on my "new" Debian Etch machine. Oh sure, there are faster, better computers available but I don't need the"bestest" computer because it costs the "mostest" and, like most folks, the only thing I have plenty of is enthusisasm. *grin*
For the technically minded, the high points of my two computers are now...
Primary
OS: Debian 4.0, Etch
1.8 GHz Duron
512 MB RAM
20 GB HDD
Secondary
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
1.8 GHz P4
512 MB RAM
HDD Master: 40 GB w/WinXP installed
HDD Slave: 40 GB, used as storage but contains a fully functioning copy of Win2K Pro SP4
As you may have surmised, I took hard disk drive out of my Win2K machine, leaving the Operating System intact, and installed it as a slave drive on the new XP machine. This assures me continued access to all of my files and, at need, I can yank it out, place it back into the machine it came out of and boot into a fully funtional Win2K system. The best hard disk drive in my parts box was a 20 GB Western Digital so that's what I installed in the Duron system before installing Debian Etch and, after installing all the extra software I wanted and copying a couple of CDs full of files KDiskFree (a nifty little Linux utility) tells me the hard drive is 26.6% full and a brief moment of mental math tells me that translates to just over 70% free space. I'm a happy camper.
I've used Etch as my primary operating system for about a week now and I'm very impressed with it so far. I'm using a Gnome application called Gedit as my main editor and, a couple of days ago, I found that the spell check function wasn't working. After five minutes of research on the web I learned that Gedit uses an application called "aspell"; I turned on Synaptic ran a search, found aspell in the repository and that it wasn't installed, marked it for installation, clicked on "Apply" and a few minutes later it was installed and fully functional. This experience is, for me, the single best reason for switching to Linux; again and again I've been able to find the software I needed in the repository and, once installed, Synaptic keeps it current and that's true of all installed software. I keep three CDs full of Windows applications in three separate folders on my Windows computer and, because keeping each application current means going to a separate website to check the version number, I spend a great deal of time checking and downloading. I'll continue to own and use a Windows computer and when XP nears its EOL I'll buy a used Vista computer but Windows will never again be my primary operating system. For all the reasons which matter to me, Linux makes good sense.
Lisa says:
I've been very busy; check back in a couple of days.