Keith Devens .com - Weblog: New computer

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Sunday, October 23, 2005

New computer

Just purchased a new laptop. Here's everything I install on a new computer:

Firefox
Thunderbird
OpenOffice
EditPlus
jEdit (and a bunch of its plugins)
metapad (and replaced notepad with it)
Perl, Python, Ruby
Irfanview and all plugins
Acrobat Reader
iTunes
Trillian
µTorrent OpenOffice downloaded in < 3:45 (!) with it.
Subversion and TortoiseSVN
CLCL
TaskSwitchXP

Other:

Newest version of Synaptic touchpad drivers
Turn off as much of the Windows features that try to protect me (show hidden and system files, show file extensions, and so on)
Get rid of as much of the Windows crap as possible (Windows Messenger, Outlook Express).
Turn off the annoying Windows sounds at startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff.
Run Windows update first thing and get all the security updates.
Turn on the address bar and the status bar in Explorer windows.

Permalink | 15 Comments | Tags: Programming | id 7490

02:17 (utc-5)
edited: 02:21 (utc-5)

← Open Office 2.0 released

It's been rough →

Comments

Hannibal wrote:

No Kubuntu?

Kubuntu!

∴ Hannibal | 23-Oct-2005 9:28am est | #8524

Hannibal wrote:

What about Visual C# 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Express?

∴ Hannibal | 23-Oct-2005 9:31am est | #8525

69.137.122.36 wrote:

Will do Visual C# Express later when I get a chance. Everything on this list is stuff I've installed already.

∴ 69.137.122.36 | 23-Oct-2005 12:37pm est | #8526

Ben wrote:

WinMerge (http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/)

∴ Ben | 23-Oct-2005 2:19pm est | #8527

Adam Vandenberg (http://adamv.com/) wrote:

For .NET development, Reflector:
http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/

Awesomely useful for seeing what the standard library is actually doing.

∴ Adam Vandenberg | 24-Oct-2005 10:02am est | http://adamv.com/ | #8536

Hannibal (http://imoscar.com) wrote:

Rotor is really useful for seeing what the standard library is doing also.

∴ Hannibal | 24-Oct-2005 11:15am est | http://imoscar.com | #8538

Elling wrote:

Which laptop did you buy?

∴ Elling | 26-Oct-2005 3:14pm est | #8551

Keith (http://keithdevens.com/) wrote:

I got an HP Pavillion zv6203cl for $998.42 at Sam's Club. It's basically an updated version of the company laptop I was using, which I was pretty happy with. Plus, I had to get the computer in a hurry, and I wanted to pay about a grand, so given all of the above this made sense for me.

∴ Keith | 27-Oct-2005 5:30pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #8562

Keith (http://keithdevens.com/) wrote:

Update: Here are the specs. Only thing I don't like about the system so far is that the backspace key makes a different sound than the rest of the keys, so it's a little jarring when I have to backspace.

∴ Keith | 27-Oct-2005 5:34pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #8563

Elling wrote:

Well... better focus on your typing accuracy then. So you'll have to use the backspace key less frequently....

∴ Elling | 28-Oct-2005 12:37pm est | #8569

Elling wrote:

Specs look fine, btw, except I'd say it was maybe a bit on the heavy side. But for $1000 it's probably a pretty good buy.

∴ Elling | 28-Oct-2005 12:40pm est | #8570

Keith (http://keithdevens.com/) wrote:

But for $1000 it's probably a pretty good buy.

Thanks. I thought so.

∴ Keith | 28-Oct-2005 12:48pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #8571

Will wrote:

I noticed you bought the computer i'm looking at. Now that you've had it a while, how do you like it? Weight, Noise, Heat, Speed? Also, did you buy it instore or online? Thanks for any help you might have!

∴ Will | 8-Nov-2005 2:53pm est | #8631

Keith (http://keithdevens.com/) wrote:

It's a little heavy, but definitely has good sound for a laptop. The fans are noisier than I'd like -- I'm not sure the previous laptop I had (as I mentioned, basically the prior version of this current one) was as noisy, but it could have been and maybe I didn't notice. It gets as hot as any laptop I suppose. I bought it at Sam's Club, as I mentioned. Speed is fine, but I'm not a great judge because I'm not doing anything too demanding and haven't done speed comparisons.

∴ Keith | 8-Nov-2005 3:39pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #8632

Keith (http://keithdevens.com/) wrote:

One thing I've noticed is that the wireless card is sub-par... I'll be sitting next to someone else who's surfing the Internet and my laptop can't even find the connection. I've just updated the drivers... I'll see if that fixes it.

In any case, I likely wouldn't have bought this laptop if didn't need one in such a hurry. But, it's worked out well enough.

∴ Keith | 9-Nov-2005 5:11pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #8640

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