munky.net

Since I’m starting to use a laptop more frequently these days, I decided to reconfigure my home network a bit so as to centralize my work files. Previously I had kept my work files on my desktop PC and used the Offline Files feature built into Windows 2000 and XP to synchronize a small number of files with an older laptop that I used only occasionally. That scheme worked fine at the time, but since I’m now planning on doing an increasing amount of work on my laptop instead of my desktop I didn’t want to require that my desktop machine be turned on to synchronize files.

Since I have a third machine running linux and MythTV that is on all the time anyway, I decided to set up a Samba share on that machine and make that my work files’ primary repository. An added advantage of the Samba configuration is that I can use rdiff-backup for easy remote backups of the repository. Configuring Samba was relatively painless, and far simpler than I remember it being from a few years ago.

Problems arose when I attempted to set up Offline Files on my laptop to create a local mirror of the files on the Samba share. (more…)

I took delivery of a brand-new Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop today, which I got a pretty good deal on using one of Dell’s common online coupons (never pay full price for Dell stuff!). Basic features are a 1.86GHz/2MB cache/533MHz FSB Pentium M 750 processor and 128MB DDR ATI Mobility Radeon X300 video. This is primarily a graphics and CAD work machine for me so I didn’t want to go with any of the less expensive integrated graphics solutions out there.

The real reason I chose the Dell, though, is the screen. It’s a 15.4 inch widescreen WUXGA LCD panel, which has an outstanding resolution of 1920×1200 pixels, which until only recently was unheard of for any consumer-priced LCD display, much less one on a laptop. I don’t know how Dell did it, but they were offering the WUXGA screen as an option for only $150 more than the default 1280×800 screen, which for me was a no-brainer. (more…)