I’m typing this on my new laptop. It’s running Linux, the WiFi interface is working using a combination of ndiswrapper and the windows device driver and everything’s hunky dory.

Well, not quite. Citylink didn’t deliver the machine until midday yesterday even though I paid for before 10:30am delivery and the extended warranty pack wasn’t included. I’ll contact the vendor to sort these things out as the before 10:30am delivery cost an extra £10 and the extra warranty has to be registered within a fortnight. I’m sure this will all be sorted out.

As for the laptop itself, it turns out to be not that much heavier than my old one and is only a bit bigger. The fan runs quite a lot under Linux ‘cos the ACPI isn’t as advanced as under Windows, where the CPU fan just sort of ticks over. Remember, this is an AMD Athlon64 3200+ so it’s not a slow processor.

One thing I think Acer have made a mistake with is selling the machine in the UK without the Bluetooth chip and leaving the bluetooth button on the machine. I have the top of the range machine yet they’ve left out the bluetooth chip, which would probably cost about £10 to install. Now, £10 is an insignificant amount relative to the cost of the machine, so it’s a case of spoilling the ship for a ha’p’th of tar.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty impressive package and I’m very pleased with it.