I recently replaced my aging MacBook (the white plasticky one) with a new Sony Vaio VGN-NW15G (yes that is quite a catchy name). I immediately split up the partition and installed Ubuntu Karmic in the bigger section, leaving a small Vista (which it came pre-installed with) partition which I will use occasionally for building QGIS installers for windows. When I bought the laptop the salesman told me I could upgrade to Windows 7 since it was close to the Win 7 release for the ‘bargain’ fee of USD $15 (around ZAR 120). Imagine my joy after going through an arduous form filling, all my personal details sharing process on the sony Vaio website to arrive at this screen:

Suddenly that ‘free’ upgrade for a small handling fee is feeling like a big rip off at $USD45 …. I guess I’ll be (occasionally) using vista for the next 3 years….

Aside from this irritation and a rather limited battery life, I must say that this laptop makes a first class Ubuntu Karmic 64 bit platform – everything ‘just works’. And I mean everything from webcam, wifi, sd slot, plug an play when connecting to LCD projectors….its a real pleasure to have such a well supported laptop to run my beloved Linux operating system on.