Do you still have your first computer? Your first laptop? As years go by we tend to accumulate a lot of old hardware which, at least in our mind, hold some value, at least a sentimental one. Yes, I still have my first laptop but I also have many generations of hardware of all types in between. How can I throw away that server which I used for 3 years, it must be still usable somehow!...
My first hi-res laptop was a Dell I8000 which had a, huge at the time, resolution of 1600×1200. It was quite expensive because of this but also a wonderful and productive experience. My next laptop was also a Dell, a I8600, which had a “wide-screen”. This means it had a 1680×1050 resolution. The switch was not so heavy even if I lost 150px in one shot. I moved the panels (as in gnome panels) to the right and gained some extra space....
Someone will laugh and make fun greatly of me because of that but the truth is that in a moment of panic caused by the thought of one week without a computer I bought an Acer Aspire One the SSD version. Even if it has a very small screen it’s quite sharp and I loved this gadget right away. It comes with Linpus linux installed. Getting the prompt Just press Alt + F2 and then xterm....
Wireless support Ok, now there is an Ubuntu system installed on the old Dell Inspiron 8000. Only one thing remains: some kind of wireless support. So, to this end, I have bought an Edimax wireless usb stick: EW-7318Ug. Gutsy default By default Gutsy loads the rt73usb module when the usb stick is inserted but I was not able to use this configuration in order to connect to the wireless network even if I have tried various things....
My very old plustek scanner only had windows 9x drivers so I kind of doubt it would still work on windows. On ubutu it was ridiculous easy to use it. I just had to: copy the file ccd548.fw from the scanner installation cd to /usr/share/sane/gt68xx run xsane (i run it as root even if this is not recomended). It takes a bit to warm the lamp but then it works perfectly....