Starting Fresh: New Laptop
After five glorious years with my old laptop, it finally became too slow to do much of anything. Finally, I decided it was time and bought a new one. Today I type this blog from a new vanilla ThinkPad. Getting a new laptop is nice, but it also allows me to do something I have been putting off for a while: starting fresh. Here’s what I’m planning to do now I get the opportunity.
Operating System: Ubuntu 9.0.4 (Jaunty)
One year ago I found my old ThinkPad was running very slow under Windows. I ran across Ubuntu’s dual boot installer and fell in love. Ubuntu ran so much faster on my machine that I almost immediately switched over. However, I found that I still needed Windows for a few tasks, most importantly synchronization with my iPhone. This is why I am not just installing Linux on my laptop, but I’m taking advantage of virtualization.
Virtual Machine Environment: VirtualBox
I chose VirtualBox because it is nicely full featured and cheaper than VMWare Workstation. One of the key features is it’s support for remote USB devices. I use this to sync my iPhone on Vista.
VM 1: Windows Vista Business
I have Vista running in a virtual machine for things like iTunes that don’t work on Linux. It performs fairly poorly as a guest operating system, but it gets the job done. Still, it likes to consume 100% of one of my CPU cores at all times.
VM 2: Windows 7 Beta
I figured I would use the excuse to spinup Windows 7. To be honest, it’s not terribly more exciting than Windows Vista. So it’s sitting around my computer chilling. Maybe some day I will spin it up again. 