Upgrade time

Over the past few weeks, I have struggled to make amends with a mistake that I made. I tried to upgrade my wife's netbook, affectionately known as Dory. This computer was named after the little blue fish in Finding Nemo, simply because it was little, and blue. Little did we know how close to the mark we were with the name.

For the six people out there who have not seen this masterful film, the character Dory suffers from acute short term memory loss, like all fish would. This is also something that we found Dory, the computer, became prone to the same malady. There were times when the web browser would crash for reasons unknown, then go on as if nothing happened. We couldn't use the touch pad, because we discovered that she would forget how to boot up if you did that. Then after three years the battery started to give out, and would only last for about 45 minutes from it's original battery life of 2 hours.

Added to this, the netbook was an early version, and was running Linpus Lite. A Linux OS that was very tightly locked down. I finally figured out how to access the root, only to discover the OS had been abandoned for at least two years. All updates, even browser updates, could not be done through the OS. Yet I felt there was a way to get the Firefox updated to Version 3.6 and I tried my best to do so.

This is when I discovered that I don't know Linux very well.

In my efforts to figure out how to upgrade the browser, I had to move some files. Where I moved them to, I'm still not sure. Neither is Dory, and now will not run the web browser because of this. I wasn't sure what I did, but I knew it was bad. Oh, the writer still worked, and the Mplayer would still work when it felt like it, but the one program we used the most was done.

Most people would throw up their hands and give up, but I had a feeling that I could get Dory working again. After learning how to make a boot stick, because Dory doesn't have an optical drive, I installed Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Netbook Remix. Firefox was functional, and on a recent update! Life was good! Until I tried to use the wireless...

While the main driver was Atheros, it was not recognizing the AR5006ES wifi card. It was looking for a AS5001 card. I found madwifi, and had hope that it would work, but after the installation and recompiling the kernel, I had to throw my hands up and call it quits. I had given it a good honest try, and Dory is still a good little internet terminal. So long as you're not trying to do anything too complicated, or busy, or twitter, or would be better with a larger screen or better resolution. And given that if you're going to be using her for longer than 40 minutes, you should be close to an outlet, or else the computer would die.

In hindsight, I'm surprised this day didn't come sooner.

Lack of functional wifi was the last straw, and it was time to scout out a replacement for little Dory.

And search I did. At first I was strongly considering purchasing a Galaxy Tab. Small, compact, cute, and runs Android 2.2 with great competence. What more could you ask for?

What about novel writing?

Dory would still be able to carry out that responsibility, since OpenOffice still functions decently, but if Caitlin would want to novel as well, then we're in a bit of a bind. True, a bluetooth keyboard would solve that ordeal, but iPaq still functions well for an eReader.

Then I did some thinking. Did I really want a tablet, netbook, laptop, or a smartphone?

First world problems.

After some deliberation, I came to the conclusion that while a touch pad interface would be excellent, and an iPad would make use of the app that Caitlin purchased by accident, there was a far better solution, which cost wound up being about the same as a top of the line iPad2. For quite some time I was looking into getting Caitlin a Wacom tablet in order to help with digital art, especially since she's developed a healthy interest in Gimp as of late.

Plus it is our anniversary, and our 100th monthavesary is coming up soon too. It's going to be a boring holiday season...

But where did we get the money for all this? Well, the government finally discovered that we added Bronwyn to our family nearly eleven months ago, and they paid us all the back payments on the tax benefits we should have been receiving. So this isn't so much a treat for us, but for our girls!

At least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself every time I boot up Olivia, which is the name of the laptop that I purchased to replace Dory, and Iris (our desktop) to an extent. While it's not exactly a desktop replacement, it outperforms our desktop on most every scale. Six times as much RAM, hard drive with sixteen times the capacity, higher resolution screen output, and HD compatibility.

But why the name Olivia? First, Memory Express had a TRON:Legacy keyboard on display, so I had that on my mind. Second, one of the actresses in said movie is Olivia Wilde, also did a great job on House, M.D. and I'm eager to see how she does in Cowboys & Aliens this weekend. Third, the name Olivia is nice, and we haven't reserved it for any of our daughters.

So far, so good. But I admit that it's going to take a bit of getting used to to figure out the Windows Live Movie Maker. With the hardware that Olivia has, I'm thinking it shouldn't be that tough. Just have to get used to the minimal GUI, or purchase some more heavy duty software.

Dory, you're an adorable little netbook and you still have your uses, but it was time for something a little more up to date with a bit more guts under the hood.

Welcome Olivia!