Thoughts on my roommate’s computer

When I first arrived in Salzburg, Austria, I didn’t have Internet access. I still couldn’t use the Internet in the dorm, because I haven’t gotten my student ID number and my pincode yet.

Well, I was thinking to use my roommate’s computer, because he wasn’t there. But I thought that would be illegal (Now, I’m talking about “legality” in technology), because it’s like stealing. Besides, I thought that his computer would be protected by passwords like mine (”We” can make it work). So, I didn’t bother.

On Monday, after the power was back on (I knocked down the power in my room on Sunday, remember?), he told me that if I wanted to use the Internet, I should do it anytime. I asked him about the password and stuff, but he said, “Just click ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes,’ and ‘Yes.’” Man, I should’ve known from the beginning. I could’ve sent emails to my friends, including to the special one, but…

Anyway, his computer is not secure. It’s old and the processor is Pentium III. His memory is about 1.3 something GB and I thought it wasn’t fair. How is that possible? His computer is slow and when he turns it on, it’s making noises.

He needs to defrag and check disk his system and I’m sure there are spywares, adawares and God knows what in his system and I was pretty much scared to “enter” my personal information while using it. So, I didn’t bother much about signing up for unimportant monkey business*, except for Facebook and emails.

He said he wanted to upgrade his computer and he asked me how. I told him that he needed to change the processor to a faster one, but upgrading the processor takes a lot of work. Pentium III is pretty old, although he runs Windoze XP, and I don’t know if the motherboard can stand a faster processor. Then, what about the heat sink and blah blah blah. There are just so many things that he has to change and he will end up in spending a lot of money. I wish I could suggest him to buy a new computer and give his old one to me, , because I have PLANS for his computer. I’d install any Linux distro, or I could install FreeBSD or I could also install Solaris or openSolaris (Yaaay, Unix!), but I think I’ll just install Linux. And I’d also make it as a web server.

My hands are itchy. I just want to do it.

*Monkey business: A term that I created, which means anything that has anything to do with money.

Ditching Windows

Today, I thought about ditching Windows XP for good and would utilize my 55 GB hard drive for several Linux distributions and/or other Unix operating systems, such as Solaris, openSolaris or FreeBSD (Or any of the BSD family). If I had the CD, I would also install OS X Leopard (Too bad it’s not free).

I have installed several Linux distributions in my laptop and most of the drivers are pretty much supported, except that I couldn’t use my wireless. I actually can, and there are ways to make it work. So, I don’t think it will be a problem at all if I really ditch Windows XP for good. That way, I won’t need to worry about spywares, viruses, trojan horses, worms and BSODs.

However, the only time to do that is during Christmas break or at the end of the semester, in which case I won’t use my laptop for school work.

I will patiently wait for that time. Wait, in that case, I’m gonna have to have two partitions in my external hard drive: one is in Ext3 and another is in FAT32 format.