New laptop: HP Elitebook 2530P

Hello world! So. I bought a new laptop. Introducing: HP Elitebook 2590P, also known as lappysaurus. Yes, I'm breaking the "something"-lan tradition because, frankly, I was running out of ideas. I bought lappysaurus as used, but it's only approx. 1,5 years old and has been used 2-3 times. So it's practically like new. Core 2 Duo 1,86 GHz, 4 GB RAM (got 2 GB extra from the seller), 80 GB hd (small, but I don't really need 500 GB like Acer tend to give you), 3 cell Li battery (don't really care about the battery, since I have access to electricity most places I go), 12.1" (but of course!) and approx 1.5 kg heavy. So, just my thing. Unfortunately, I'm not too fond of the design - just ain't digging the silver thing, even though it's not cheap plastics, but an alu/magnesium alloy. I was actually considered buying a ThinkPad X61s, but ruled against it in the end. But that is one hot machine. My sister calls it "blocky", but I like the clean lines and black-black-black.

I've installed ubuntu 9.04 on this machine, it was a lot faster than I remember upgrading 8.04 to 8.10 to 9.04 on evillan. And very smooth. Kudos to ubuntu for serving the masses.

11.10: I've already installed Chrome. On evillan, I found Firefox to be too slow, which may have something to do with the hardware - it got really hot in the end when I used it, even for web browsing. But I like Chrome, it doesn't have a lot of unnecessary toolbars and so on. Also, I like that the address bar is used as a search bas as well, takes up less space. Set the English google as search engine and other small modifications.

11.15: The panels. Ugh. Auto-hide for the top panel with system overviews and clock on the lower panel. Also, I removed Firefox, Help, Clock from the top panel and Trash, Go To Desktop and one of the Desktop Spaces from the lower panel. Decluttering!

11.22: I've decided no to import any settings from evillan - a fresh start. Of course, I'll copy my files, but that's it. So I have to install a number of programs now: emacs, kolourpaint, python, dropbox, evince (?), latex and thunderbird are programs I use on a daily basis. And then probably (i)maxima, maple, gnuplot, chemsketch, wine (although I rarely use it these days - nice!), marvin beans, but I'll probably just install those programs when I need them. I also have to configure about a million things on my latex setup before I'm satisfied. Good thing I have the whole weekend.

11.29: Installing thunderbird through synaptic. Though I've had some problems with the program lately, I can't subscribe to rss feeds and the gmail part looks like a mess.

11.30: Done.

11.32: Backspace as a back button in Chrome, remember to tick the "Activate Backspace for navigation in history object". Also, I've joined Google Experiments Keyboard Shortcuts.

11.37: The visual effects. I don't like them. Set them to normal under Preferences -> Appearance.

11.38: Food. And then I'll configure thunderbird.