Friday, June 20, 2008

My nc6000 and Ubuntu 8.04

So far this has been a pretty painless conversion. The laptop functions well and I have been able to connect wireless to my home network. One thing I have not been able to figure out yet (maybe roaming mode is to blame) is why when I boot by laptop off the dock, it tries to connect to my neighbors wireless access point instead of mine. I had to turn off roaming to get my network connection (secure) working but once I did, I turned it back on and it works pretty well...all except trying to connect to the wrong access point. Easy enough to change but annoying nonetheless.

The other thing that I was used to doing on the laptop when it ran XP was pulling straight off the dock and letting it go to wireless mode..maybe having to force an IP change. With Linux (at least Ubuntu 8.04) I get a blank screen when I pull the laptop off the docking station, forcing me to reboot. Not a show stopper and I am sure there is a fix for it, but again...annoying.

The battery life has been good. I have two batteries and one was only giving me an hour or so so I swapped it back to the older one and it seems to last a lot longer. I have used it for over an hour and the battery meter still shows at least an hour left. Two hours for me is a gift!

I really have not put the laptop through too much of a test since it I do not want to store data on it but all the apps I need daily are working. I still wished it was easy to connect my Garmin to Linux but it is not as user friendly as Windows so I will continue using that until a Linus program that "just works" is made available. Having my laptop to take caching would be an added treat. If something happens to it, no worries because it has already been written off!

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