Friday, 12 November 2004

At the moment, I've settled on getting another VAIO, with the particular model of interest being the VGNA29G.

Since it seems that the Linux on laptop scene has changed a lot since I last really followed it, I'm quite concerned about doing my homework before making the purchase. I decided I'd try running a live CD on one to see how much of a mess it got into. So today, I burned the Ubuntu Warty Live CD and trundled off to the local Domayne.

The sales droids were quite good about letting me have a bash with Linux on a floor model. I had a couple looking over my shoulder because they'd "never seen this Linux thing before". So far it looks encouraging. The CD did all the right stuff, it brought up X, it detected the onboard Ethernet adapter, it made some noises about detecting but failing to load firmware for the ipw2200 wireless adapter. I scribbled down the PCI IDs of the video, wireless Ethernet and audio devices and will do a bit more homework before making the decision to buy it.

It makes me sad how most current laptops on the market no longer come with a serial port, let alone an infra-red interface. I don't know how much a couple of UARTs cost, but it seems the laptop industry has universally decided "to hell with that", which is a shame. In my job I'll be wanting to manage via the console switches, routers, other appliances made by Cisco and Sun hardware. In my limited experience with USB serial adapters, I've found that they just aren't the same as the genuine article, particularly when it comes to sending breaks.

The lack of an IR interface is a real bummer, because I have this funky Polar heart rate monitor, with a watch that has an IR interface for transferring exercise data to a (Windows) application for graphing and general record keeping. It means I'll have to get yet another USB dongle if I want to try and continue using that.

I came home this afternoon to find my Sony VAIO PCG-F590 laptop making loud ominious clicking sounds. It seems that the hard drive has died.

Give the laptop is getting old, and I've replaced the battery once, and it's on its second keyboard, I think I might let it go this time. That said, it's not going to be a total loss. I'll make a bootable Linux CD, and I'll mount a filesystem via NFS, and shove it under the bed to replace the Ultra 5. It's got a significantly better soundcard than the Ultra 5, and will do a much clearer job of reading the weather forecasts with Festival.

Apparently my new employer is going to issue me with a laptop, and I can also salary sacrifice a laptop if I wish, which I might look at doing. Soon I'll have laptops coming out of my ears. All the better to test d-i with.

Now I just need to work out if contemporary VAIOs are worth buying, or if I should consider getting something else. I'm very fussy about keyboards, so one of the 12" X40's is probably not going to be for me, despite all the rave reviews from other people. I wouldn't mind something that'll do more than 1024x768 as well. And the wireless must work properly with Linux, preferably with a chipset conducive to running in monitor mode so I can do a spot of wardriving when the urge grabs me. I can feel a few laptop window shopping trips coming up...

Proving that it's not what you know, it's what people who you know already know about what you know, I've decided to accept a position back from whence I came. Except they've been busy working on changing their name since I departed.

Given that working there nearly sent me insane last time, and I chose to leave the workforce altogether and go back to university for a year to clear my head, why the heck am I going back you ask?

What's that, you didn't? I'll tell you anyway.

Granted, there is no way on God's Green Earth, you'd get me to set foot in operations again (even though I have a higher chance of fiddling with Debian there, because I managed to get it in the door last time I was there), but there are other business units within the company that I'd be prepared to have a crack at. Hopefully they won't break me in a hurry.

I'm going to work in the Professional Services business unit, and initially I'll be working onsite at one of the company's larger Australia Government agency clients, but longer term hopefully I'll be working in the Systems Integration team. Hopefully I'll learn some new stuff. I start the Monday after my final exams. I managed to negotiate three weeks off around linux.conf.au so I can run around like a headless chook.