Well, I figure it’s time to get back into blogging.  I haven’t had the motivation or the interest for it the last several months.  A number of factors contributed to that, one of them being the decrepitude of my aging G4 iBook.  For one, it just couldn’t keep up with Leopard.  Even after maxing out the RAM at 1.5 GB, it was still a sluggish mess.  And recently, the computer has been running very hot.  After about 30 minutes of usage, it becomes a lap-scorcher.  Oh, and the battery doesn’t hold a charge for longer than 10 minutes.  Basically, it’s just a miserable experience using that thing, so I’ve decided to put the old iBook out to pasture.

It took me a while to decide on a replacement.  The immediate choice was a new Mac.  I think OS X is the best operating system currently available, and I generally like the Mac design esthetic.  The problem with that option was, of course, price.  I wanted a 15″ screen, which is only available on the Macbook Pro, meaning I’d have to spend at least $1900 for a new Mac.  So I decided against the Mac in favor of a PC laptop running Linux.  I loathe Windows–hard.  After a bit of research, I settled on a Lenovo Thinkpad T500.  Thinkpads are very solid machines, with a build quality that rivals Macs.  Combine that with a bitchin’ online sale, and I was sold.

I’m currently dual booting Linux Mint and Windows.  The Linux Mint install was almost flawless.  The only thing that didn’t work right away was flash video, but I got that taken care of in a matter of minutes.  Compiz-Fusion 3D compositing works great with the Intel integrated graphics chip; the only issue being some slight window tearing when windows are moved, but this seems to be a problem with Compiz on just about every video card as far as I can tell.  Wireless works perfectly, as do the Lenovo volume and mute hotkeys.  I’ll probably spend a few weeks with Linux Mint to see how I feel about the Gnome desktop.  After that I’ll likely install openSUSE 11.1 to test out KDE.  Whichever I like best will become the permanent distro.  So I’ll probably have post up in the future about my experience installing openSUSE.