A week and a half ago my work machine, a Thinkpad I bought used, took a dive. Within about 5 minutes after boot it would freeze up and the screen would go all wonky. This was in Linux, not just the Ubuntu install I had there but also some CD-based Linuces I tried. Wasn’t the memory — I tried pulling out each of the two memory sticks one by one, and it did the same thing. Must be the mobo or something. Lost cause.
So as soon as I could afford it I got the cheapest laptop Best Buy could offer — a Gateway MX3215. I like it a lot.
I decided that I wanted to make this a primarily Windows machine, and do my development in Windows to the degree that I could. (I develop cross-platform stuff using the WxWidgets toolkit.)
So I’ve got my Firefox, my Thunderbird, my OpenOffice, all the cool Free Software I can find for Windows. Cool stuff. Got Perl and Python installed, and wxPerl and wxPython. Got the Ruby installer ready to run.
It’s funny, being back on Windows after being in Linux and MacOS for so long. It’s kind of unfamiliar territory, but there’s a freeing feeling in running the OS that everybody and his dog runs. Just one more Windows user amidst the multitudes. Oh, sure, I’d like it if I could instead have picked up a new iBook or PowerBook or one of those newfangled MacBooks, but you know, there’s something nice about being on windows. Oh sure, I had to reboot and reboot and reboot and reboot as I installed this and that and the other thing. There are downsides. But I don’t have to bang my head against the wall trying to get Linux to deal intelligently with the more subtle hardware “issues” on the machine, like sleep mode. It’s not nearly as smooth and elegant as OS X, but I know that I could pick up a $20 webcam at the drugstore and it would actually work on this thing.
Maybe I should check out some of these “video games” I keep hearing about.