I love taking things apart to see how they work. Those around me see sharp edges, exposed wires and danger, while I see evolution, improvement and opportunities to learn. Imagine my excitement disappointment when my 3+ year old laptop’s screen failed – it finally became two screens when five columns of pixels gave up, creating a new and exciting 30:70 spit visual experience.

Within a few days I had the screwdrivers out, removed the lcd panel and ordered a replacement. To be honest, I almost fainted when I actually repaired it. Feeling highly motivated, I decided to tackle the Operating System, which had been running very slowly for many months. A quick visit to ubuntu.com provided the install image for ubuntu 9.04 and thirty minutes later I had a brand new laptop. I’m really very impressed with Ubuntu, the install process was a breeze and with the exception of a minor sound issue everything just works.

After weeks of bullying from my pod mate Russell, followed by a great  two pronged sales job from Scott and Dan, I thought I should at least have a look at the new version  of Ubuntu.

So armed with Russ’ 8.10 CD I gave it a whirl, booting from the CD without installing it properly. I tried it first on my old T42 Thinkpad and it was up and running without any intervention. OK, I’m partially impressed.

Now the real test, would it cope with my 5 year old Evesham desktop?

Simple – it went on a treat, recognised all the bits (external harddrive, wired internet) – I’m now very impressed.

Plan is to buy a Mac in the new year and then turn the Windows box into Ubuntu. My daughter is not impressed as Linux doesn’t have MSN (at least that’s what I’m telling her – and will keep it like that as I think MSN has been responsible for 90% of the viruses on our box)

So count me as a new Ubuntu fan…..

Happy Christmas to both our reader. See you all again in 2009