Experimental Computer

Like many geeks, I own an older computer that I’m not afraid to experiment with. It’s an MSI Wind U100 netbook that originally came loaded with Windows XP. I have since run Ubuntu and now CrunchBang Linux on it. I originally bought the netbook so that I could do my college school work from anywhere without having to worry about carrying around a big clunker of a machine. The U100 had the fullest keyboard of any netbook at the time which appealed to me because I was mostly writing papers.

Over the years, I started to notice that I was not using the netbook as much as I thought that I would. Instead of trying to sell it (How much would I get out of a netbook anyway?), I decided to experiment with different use cases. I decided to upgrade the ram from 1GB to 2GB and loaded Ubuntu Netbook Edition on it. I quickly found out that I wanted a fuller operating system, and installed the regular version of Ubuntu. After the regular version of Ubuntu started to look and behave more and more like the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu, I eventually found myself sifting through different flavors of Linux. I decided to stick with Debian based flavors due to compatibility and familiarity. I even tried Debian itself.

However, I stopped at CrunchBang Linux and never looked back. This operating system is perfect for netbooks and older machines because it’s beautiful, lightweight, but still powerful. It can take some tweaking before you get everything working the way you want it but that’s every flavor of Linux that I’ve encountered.

Now I’m using my netbook as a portable option to write for this blog. Who knows what I’ll be using it for in the future.

It just goes to show that as long as a computer is still functioning, it is never dead. You just have to find the right use case for it.

Do you have an experimental computer laying around? Sound off in the comments.