Finally got the battered Latitude D800 running properly. I frankensteined it from three broken machines and stripped it down twice to clean it up and regunk the heatsinks, and to replace the keyboard with a German one. Once the absolute high-end of Dell's Latitude line, it has a 1.7ghz Pentium M, 512mb RAM, a 40gb hard drive and a slot-loading DVD-RW drive mounted in the original removable drive housing. The screen however is something special, a 15.4" widescreen panel with a bonkers 1920x1200 resolution, more commonly found on 24" monitors. With XP at default settings, text is ludicrously small, but very sharp. I can see how these screens cause some controversy as you can get a lot of things on the screen, but everything is so small it can strain your eyes.
The D800 has had a troubled history, first I tried Windows 7 in German, which worked to a degree but I didn't have a license. I then got Vista running on it in German, which was NOT good for the machine at all so I put Ubuntu 9.10 on it, in German. That ran quite well and handled all the hardware OK, but then I needed Windows software, so I put Windows 7 on it again in English but again was hit by a lack of a license key. I tried Ubuntu 10.04 which unusually failed to display properly, and finally put XP on it, which seems the best fit for the hardware. I'd like to get more RAM and a bigger hard drive for it, but not a priority right now. It's currently running some German tuition software on English XP. It's nice to have the German keyboard but having a German OS just adds complication at this point.
Was watching some of the Hitler parodies but kept hearing words I understood which distracted me.
Took the dog for a walk and ate reasonably OK today but I still feel like a lazy fat bastard. Need to get to the gym ASAP.
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