Well well well, what do you know? I got the nod from my dad yesterday that the new laptop had arrived, as promised. Never mind the fact that ParcelForce just opened the front door and left it in the passageway without even attempting to alert my dad, at least it got there. So I travelled up to collect it last night and I'm now composing this post on it.

First impressions are good – it came with XP Pro X64, which was a pleasant surprise as I though it was just the 32-bit version of XP Pro. Not that I'm likely to be using that, of course. I've booted it from a Ubuntu Breezy Live CD (only 32-bit, until I buy some DVD media) and that's what I'm posting from at the moment. The internal speakers show signs of being a little tinny, but what's new for a laptop? Other than that, it runs well, the included rechargable bluetooth mouse works pretty well... I haven't tested everything under Ubuntu yet.

Last night I was surfing on Windows using the integrated 54g WLAN card and I played a few random bits of a DVD, so I know they work. The wired LAN works too, I'm using that now. The widescreen looks enormous! The resolution is also high, producing a nice sharp image. Items still to check under Ubuntu: Infrared, 56k modem, IEEE1394, PCMCIA slot, SD Card slot, MemoryStick slot, WLAN. So, most of it. Although I haven't tested a lot of those under Windows yet either. It was kind of cool to just stick the SD Card in the slot and have Windows import the photos from it though. Ubuntu didn't automatically recognise the card (not like the USB key drive), so I'll have to test it later when I've got more time.

Right now I've got enough to be getting on with work-wise. Then of course it's Valentine's day, so I'll probably be cooking. And then I need to get Wifey's machine up and running before I do anything with this baby. So it's unlikely I'll be doing anything with it until the end of the week. But it does look nice on my desktop!