Laptop Setup for Work

I set up a laptop today with Windows XP. It took most of the day because I had to hunt down drivers. I booted it with Ubuntu and everything seemed to just work. I had to hit Dell's site and download fifty drivers for windows xp just to get the thing to a minimal state. How things have turned around in the last decade.

Once the hardware setup was satiated, I don't think one bit of hardware worked out of the box. I had to start installing software. This system will only be used in the lab for hooking to equipment so I'm only installing the essentials. Virus checker and Open Office. Oh, and service pack 3 for XP and the dot NET framework. It takes two hours and goodness knows how many extra megabytes of bandwidth just to be at the starting line with XP these days. It takes a day to run all the updates online. Installing a fresh image of XP is just plane dangerous on the internet.

At my last job, all the desktops were laptops. The entire company switched for whatever reason. Some said for recycling, others said it was for a "mobile workforce". Some said it was just to cut down on the huge expense of moving people from one cubicle to another every six months. It matters little. The power of the laptops had come of age in 2002 or whenever we did the switch.

This laptop was filthy. The vents had permanent dust stains. The screen had spots that would not come off. I don't want to look at the keyboard very closely. Never a good idea. The screen was dim until I booted with Ubuntu to wipe the drive. The brightness went to what I would call a normal level at that point. Not sure why or what triggered it.