My lappy

This post is due for some time. There is a saying in Kannada 'ಹಲ್ಲಿದ್ದರೆ ಕಡಲೆ ಇಲ್ಲಾ,ಕಡಲೆ ಇದ್ದರೆ ಹಲ್ಲಿಲ್ಲಾ' meaning 'when you have teeth, you don't have nuts and when you have nuts you don't have teeth. I always thought once I get my laptop, I will do a lot of things..but I haven't started yet, I'm just preparing for the start.

Mine is a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with following config:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5250 @ 1.50GHz (2 CPUs), 2038MB RAM,Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2, 15'' LCD screen, bluetooth,Wifi, 1.3px integrated cam,6 cellbattery, 160GB harddisk, DVR R/W drive, Media direct and all other basic things that comes with a laptop but no extra graphics card.

This one cost me 45K but the prices fell by 2K even before I got the system in my hand. Probably I will get some extra goodies for the price change. Dell imports the systems from Malaysia, and it takes at least 3 weeks for the delivery to clear the Lakshman rekha and come out.My system got delayed a bit more because of some misplacement by the delivery person.

There is very little to complain as of now except for a bad viewing angle, irritating DVD drive and loads of Dell's system utilities. The system came with only one drive partition. When I asked the service engineer for more partitions, I learnt that at max I can get only 2 working partitions considering the previously existing recovery and media partition. Now I have a 25 GB C drive and a 121 GB D drive.

I also received the latest Ubuntu Linux CD after ordering it from shippit. Live CD was good but still I'm not convinced to switch to ubuntu. Plain and simple reason, I dont have a internet connection. If I switch to ubuntu, I wouldst be able to enjoy all kinds of media formats unless I am connected. May be I can try for a dual boot system just to get started with Linux only if I win over my laziness

The first thing I did after getting the laptop was install a few applications. Here is a long list.

1)Mozilla Firefox
2)7-Zip
3)Audacity
4)Blender 2.45
5)Gimp
6)Inkscape
7)Irfanview
8)Kompozer
10)Launchy
11)Mediacoder
12)MediaMonkey
13)Mozilla sunbird
14)Notepad++
15)OpenOffice
16)Process Explorer
17)Python 2.5
18)Scribus
19)Stellarium
20)SumatraPDF
21)VideoLAN
22)GhostScript
23)Dev C++
24)Web Developer Server Suite

Of all these softwares, the italicized ones were the ones I was trying out for the first time.
Blender is hell of a 3d modeling software. Though the learning curve is steep, I have started learning it.
Stellarium is just another cool software showing real time sky.Irfanview, Inkscape and Gimp are my dispensable tools.Seems like Scribus may join this team also. Scribus needs Ghostscript and Blender,Inkscape,Gimp need python, so had to install them also.
I used Nvu for HTML editing earlier but Kompozer has replaced it now. Mediamonkey is a nice media player. Sunbird is just an OK calendering application. I can do some screen casting using VLC. SumatraPDF is a really light PDF viewer. OpenOffice looks cool, I'm drafting my post on Openoffice writer itself. Firefox,7-zip, Launchy & notepad++ need no explanation, they are a must. I have Dev C++ installed but seems like I have forgotten all C & C++ I had learnt.

Another application that needs a mention is web Developer Server Suite. It has Apache,MySql,PHP, Perl,awstats cores and web applications (CMS) like drupal,wordpress,Joomla,mediawiki,phpBB. A really good suite for learning these all.

There is so much to do,so much to learn, wish we had 48 hours a day. Wish teleporation becomes a practical reality sooner, so that I can make better use of my commute time. When you have too much to do, you dont know what to do, where to start from, my state is somewhat similar. I need to slow down and take things one by one.