I wish Nokia sold laptops. I really liked my Nokia 770, that I bought in December 2005. It’s running mostly free software, and is very Debianic. I wasn’t traveling with a laptop then, and it was a nice (and often cheap) way to get online. I also read a lot of books with the excellent FBReader. And I created MaemoDict, which never really worked very well I must admit. But, silly enough I was more focused on working on the CouchSurfing code base once I finally bought a laptop (that is seriously broken now).
I saw the announcements of the N810 a couple of weeks ago, and I was just in time to apply for Nokia’s developer program, which gives developers the possibility to buy the device for 99 euros instead of the usual price. So I’m very happy to receive that they accepted my application (”I want to have many dictionaries and encyclopedias in my pocket”). Now I’m actually reading Nokia’s entire announcement, and it’s friggin great! The N800 already had a faster CPU, a webcam, much more memory and a normal SD card, but the N810 is totally awesome, it comes with GPS and a real mini-keyboard! And, it’s great to see that Nokia has moved away from the proprietary Opera to a Mozilla based browser.
Because of the GPS it could be interesting for Citizen Logistics, and I’m really looking forward to see if it’s possible to get maps.hitchwiki.org on it!
I have to admit it, I am typing this using Windows Vista. I really needed a new laptop. I couldn’t wait for amylin to bring me a MacBook, and Apple is just too expensive in Europe. I also considered getting a Dell with Ubuntu, but unfortunately, in Europe they’re only selling them in the UK, France and Germany. And then I saw an ad of a Toshiba with 160 GB HD and 2 GB RAM, DVDRW and all that stuff, for 599 euros. So I went there this morning and got it. I had considered trying for a refund of the Windows tax but Paolo told me, you can do it with Acer, but you pay the costs of sending the laptop to Milano and having it sent back, which is more than the money you get back.
I started my laptop. Vista is yucky. Lots of stuff going on. And then, after not even 30 minutes of using it, without doing anything weird. I copyied some music from an MP3 player, nicely telling Windows that I want to eject it, and I closed the lid. So it went to sleep mode (and I hate it when laptops do that). 3 minutes or so after it woke up I got the Blue Screen of Death. This is what it told me after starting my laptop again:
Firma problema:
Nome evento problema: BlueScreen
Versione SO: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
ID impostazioni locali: 1040
Ulteriori informazioni sul problema:
BCCode: d1
BCP1: B13C3158
BCP2: 00000002
BCP3: 00000008
BCP4: B13C3158
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
File che contribuiscono alla descrizione del problema:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini110807-01.dmp
C:\Users\guaka\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-81916-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\guaka\AppData\Local\Temp\WER71E4.tmp.version.txt
Leggere l’informativa sulla privacy:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=50163&clcid=0×0410
Right now I’m downloading an ISO with Ubuntu Gutsy. I hope next time I need a new laptop they will come with Ubuntu out of the box.
UPDATE: I started a page about GNU/Linux on the Toshiba L40-157.
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