new laptop

Finally got around to getting a new laptop, its a Dell Inspiron 640m. 1gb memory, 120Gb hard drive, decent 14" screen, and lighter than my old laptop. The OS is Win XP Home. The benefit of waiting a little too long to get a new laptop is that it seems so very much better than the old one when you do.

My timing was influenced somewhat by the upcoming general Vista release. I wanted to get a new laptop before Vista is packaged with new systems. I want to take my time before tackling Vista, and I didn't want my desire for more powerful hardware to drag me into Vista before I was ready.

I'm experimenting here at the beginning by using as much open source or free software as I can. These include:
Firefox
Thunderbird
Open Office
Textpad
Irfanview
Inkscape

I've also installed ITunes (but haven't transported my library over yet).

I've installed Python for whatever little programming projects I come up with. I may install Haskell in order to learn what its about.