Constantly having to use the work and library computers (to post and respond here, among other things), is getting to be a PITA, so I figured I’d toss out a bit of a Hail Mary pass here and see if anyone in need of flute repairs has a used, but not completely antiquated, laptop they’d be interested in trading. I know it’s a long shot, but what the hay, you never know till you ask
A PM is probably the best way to reach me (although I will have limited access to a computer this weekend)
Cheers,
Loren
P.S. Repairs could include any or all of the following: Crack repair, repadding keyed flutes, bore refinishing, recorking, and so on. Not a complete list of what I can handle, just the usual suspects. Shoot me a message if you have questions about other types of work.
You know Loren, that might not be a bad computer, if it’s in good shape. While I wouldn’t want to put WinXP on it, it would run any of several Linux flavors just fine. Kevin, how much memory does it have? One that’s particularly user-friendly is UBUNTU. The minimum recommended requirements are 128 Mb RAM and 2 GB of hard disk space. I’ve messed around with it a little, and I like it pretty well. It’s pretty easy for Windows users to get used to. Another one that’s pretty neat is SimplyMEPIS. Both will let you download a LiveCD version that you can run from your CD-ROM to try out before you commit to one or the other.
If you have a linux-savvy person somewhere who can help you only install what you really need, a 400Mhz laptop should work very fine for email, web surfing and the occasional chat, but probably not much else. The killer always seems to be word (and of course, image or sound) processing – there are good free programs for linux, but they need memory as hell.
I’d offer my help, but I’m on the other end of the world…
Unfortunately I do need to be able to do a certain amount photo and music related stuff, so I think linux is not such a good option for me, particularly on an older machine…
You can also check out “Linux on Laptops” to see what might be a good solution for you.
I got an IBM 600E (400 MHz) for about 100$ that Im sure will run quite well with Gentoo.
