With the purchase of the HP laptop a few weeks ago, the number of computers in our home exceeded the number of humans.
I bought the new laptop because the screen on the previous laptop went dead. And while the instructions for replacing the inverter board on the Inside My Laptop site were easy to follow, the screen remained blank. For a while I used this laptop with an external monitor. But then its screen started to work again. Yet, I cannot rely on it working all the time -- it seems to dislike rebooting. It's a shame because I just bought a genuine HP battery for it, and the OS (Vista Home Premium) should be around for a few more years.
And remember the computer that I wasn't sure what to do with? Well, I loaded Windows 2000 Professional on it. It turns out that Firefox 12 runs on Windows 2000, so it's a good enough solution. However, after I installed and updated AVG Anti-virus, the computer failed to reboot. I guess I'll try the repair option and then reinstall if it doesn't work.
I did try installing XP first. But it was very slow. Plus I had the issue of an invalid CD key and no prospect of activating it. I do actually own XP, but I'm not sure how to convince the computer of that.
Another neat thing I do with this computer is I boot Dynebolic from the CD. It runs really well, but there is the issue that there's no Flash player for it. As well I couldn't figure out how to create multiple password-protected user accounts. So I wouldn't want to use it for any secret, anonymous activity, like updating this blog, without pretending it's a public computer.
