Experiment 2 continued

The computer arrived yesterday.  I hooked it up and installed ubuntu 8.04 RC.  Everything seems to work just fine.  It even detected and configured the sound.  It is using an internal speaker.  I have neglected to plug in my regular speakers.  Of course with everything working there is not much to experiment with.

Experiment 2

I ordered a second hand desktop computer that I am going to add to my experimental arsenal. It is on it’s way and should be here tuesday. Experiment 2 It should be here tuesday. I am planning on putting Ubuntu Linux on it. I might try a few other linux distros on it as well.

It is comming along

I have found my CD-ROM drive and bought a box of disks.  I am not certain where my extra hardrive went but I am going to start without it.  I can always start over later. My cdrom drive is a Microsolutions backpack cdrom supposedly it is supported by the paride driver. The last time I tried to get it working I was unable to but that might have been my own incompetence.

Toshiba project on temporary hold.

My tosiba project is on temporary hold.  I am unable to locate some of the hardware I need.  Ie my spare hardrive and the cd-rom drive.  I also need to get some floppy disks and use my mother’s computer to make the nessisarry boot disks.  I am bugged by the lack of floppy drives in modern computers.  It makes working with older tech rather difficult at times.

 

I did follow the instructions I found for replacing the harddrive and found that to be a piece of cake.  It took about twenty minutes to open it up, take out the hardrive, put it back and close everything up.

Review: Acer Aspire 3680

Processor: Intel Celeron M 440 @ 1.86 gigahertz

RAM: 512 gigs

Hard Drive: 80 Gig

OS:  Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic

This Little Laptop is Well worth the Money I paid for it.  I have been using it for about six months and have had no problems with it.    It is not Heavy and moves around the house with ease.  It worked very well the one time I took it to the ocean for the weekend.  The on-board wireless allows me to easily connect to the Internet from where ever I happen to be.  The wide-screen monitor is crystal clear.  It comes with 3 usb ports, 1 pcmcia port, 1 svideo port, VGA out, Ethernet and a modem.  The on-board Multi-card reader works well reading SD cards.    I have used the on-board DVD reader/CD burner to watch movies and burn cds with no problems at all. 

The included software is almost non-existant.  It of course came with the operatings system but lacked any sort of office suite.  I fixed that by installing Open Office.  It did come with a rather nice piece of back up software that I have only used once to make the laptops restore CDs. It would have been nice if they had included those in the box.  It also came with Norton internet security which I uninstalled as soon as it expired. 

I have considered installing Some version of Linux on it but why tamper with something that works and works fairly well.

I would definatly buy this machine again if I had to.