So after my last laptop(HP) began getting outdated. . .I decided to get one of the Dell laptops with Ubuntu on them. I got the Dell Inspiron 1420 and installed the KDE interface since I prefer it over Gnome.

Maybe a month went by and I decided to update to the beta of the next release(heron I believe). It broke the video drivers, so I reverted back to the previous version. Then the final version came out and I tried to upgrade again. . .and again it broke and wouldn’t boot correctly.

Now I was a semi-active noob on the Ubuntu support forums and was learning step by step as much as the community would teach me. So I was used to the OS breaking from 1 thing being set wrong and I was used to troubleshooting issues well. . .heck the last laptop I used had an ATI graphics drivers.

Maybe it was because I had just dropped ~1100 after taxes on a new machine and it was already broken and had to be ‘fixed’. So I said forget it. Grabbed my copy of XP. . .and proceeded to format and start fresh. After the disc booted into install mode windows couldn’t find the internal HDD. After booting the desktop up and doing some quick Googling and found this blog post.

I figured forget it. . .and picked up a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. After booting from the disc I deleted the partitions Ubuntu had set and began installing the dreaded Windows Vista.

Now, this was right when everyone was bashing Vista for being a resource hog and uncompilable with a lot of hardware. I had a brand new laptop. . .2GB of RAM, Intel Duo chip and a SATA HDD. . .so I didn’t have any issues at all. In fact it fixed the issue I was having with the Windows XP disc.

I used Vista for long time but for one reason or another I decided to wipe the machine and start fresh. I figured why not change the BIOS setting that prevented me from XP seeing my HDD and try XP this time around. I mean. . .I’d install Windows 2000 if I knew everything would work. . .that version was always my favorite.

So I am not XP SP3 now. . .and I am happy. . .not that I wasn’t happy before. But at least the laptop is running cooler. I hear the fan revving up less and the left side of the laptop rarely heats up. That side used to get very hot at times. I don’t miss anything. . .I didn’t use the Aero theme since I’m a minimalist(even though I love the eye candy on Ubuntu).

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