The Linux Extremist

Not every moment in life is meant to be exciting. For every thrill ride, there is a long wait in line at the Post Office. For every gripping episode of “24″, there’s a documentary by Fred Dibnah talking about steam engines. For every Italy, there’s a Switzerland.

I tried to remind myself of this as I began to use the laptop that my company supplied to me yesterday, a HP Compaq nc6220. For every computer that I build and upgrade, and makes me want to crank up Beethoven’s 9th as I surf the internet at warp speed, there are computers like this very bland, safe little laptop.

First impressions of the laptop were very good. At first, I thought it was an IBM Thinkpad in drag: the metal cover, the “nipple” mouse in the middle of the keyboard, all suggested a lineage back to the Thinkpads. I haven’t investigated it, but it would not surprise me if it was a rebranded Lenovo product. It’s very light, particularly compared to my old HP Compaq nx7000.

It’s only when the laptop is fired up the tedium begins. The system boots quickly; it has a 1.73 Ghz Centrino processor and 512 MB of RAM, plus a fairly capable hard drive. Somehow it crunches through the leaden code of Windows XP Professional with relative ease. However, the laptop screen itself is fairly hard on the eyes - compared to the quality of my nx7000, it’s quite poor and fuzzy. Graphics are supplied by Intel’s Integrated Graphics, which is the kiss of death in so far as any presentational quality is concerned. That said all the software loaded onto it, and I made a point of putting on Openoffice and Firefox, boots fairly quickly and performs well.

I did wonder if the system would perform even better with Linux, so I tried it out with an Ubuntu Dapper Drake Live CD. There were a number of booting errors; however, once these passed, it was clear that Ubuntu was designed to handle virtually all of the hardware on the laptop - wireless worked instantly, as did sound. But at the same time, it could not be described as an inspiring computer experience, merely an adequate one.

It was at this point that I had my epiphany; this is the perfect office machine. You wouldn’t want to do anything but work on it. There’s no fun to be had with it; you wouldn’t dare play a game, nor even have an interesting desktop image (believe me, I tried). It functions, it does its job well, and it’s fine. Switch it off at 6 and leave it behind.

I’ll never fully enjoy using it. But that isn’t the point; for the exciting experiences in computing I have using Linux and tinkering with my computers, this is its diametric opposite. I may long for and enjoy using computers that push the boundaries, but the nc6220 is all business. And perhaps business requires computers that are merely born to be mild.

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