Laptop Upgrade

[vakkotaur]

The laptop computer I've had for a few years is "old and busted" in the real sense of being old (it's a 75MHz 486) and busted (the thing won't close - it threatens to twist the display off if moved very far). I can put up with the old for many things, but the busted pretty thoroughly removes the point of a laptop machine: portability.

Fortunately, all that won't much matter as when jmaynard recently visited michaelmink he was given a newer laptop and accessories to haul back for me. This machine is a Compaq Armada, with I think a 266MHz Pentium II. Nowhere near today's multi-GHz machines, but still quite a step up for me. And for what I expect to do with it, more than sufficient.

Now I have a few decisions to make:

What to do with shan, the old laptop? Unless the hinge can be repaired (and I don't see a point in putting all that much effort into attempting a repair) it'll never be properly portable. I'm not sure there is much I could do, or would want to, with it. It just feels wasteful to chuck it completely. At this point I have little fear of damaging it as it's already broken. If I do keep it for something, I'll probably at least try to put linux on it. Even if unsuccessful I'd at least have the pleasure of removing Windows 95.

What distribution to put on the new laptop? There's more than enough CPU there for DeLi, and the DeLi developer comes right and says that if you have that much CPU you should probably run something else. With shan running (crawling?) 95, I only dealt with the home network as that kept the machine behind a decent firewall. With this machine running linux I'd consider using a dialup or network (maybe even wireless) connection when travelling.

What to name the new machine? Even if I don't keep shan around, I don't want to give the Compaq that name. That name was chosen to fit a 486 stuck with 95. I'm considering tarpan, but that might not be quite right and it could easily be some other name.