One hugely succesful laptop upgrade ....

[clonmult]

Both SWMBOs laptop (1.7gig celeron, 1gig ram, 80gb drive) and mine (1.8gig Core2Duo, 3gig ram, NVidia graphics, 250gb drive) have both been having performance problems - hers was generally running way too slow, mine was running "something" every so often that brought it to a crawl.

So after loads of messing around, and considering the options (more memory, installing an SSD on each), I've gone for a major OS upgrade on both.

XP was considered, but its just plain naff, albeit relatively reliable.

Windows 7 is supposedly fantastic from what colleagues have said after upgrading. Problem is that to upgrade 2 PCs is the cost of a good few ££.

So it was off to ubuntu. Installed on both laptops in next to no time. Simpler, easier to use UI. Massively better performance on both laptops (the Celeron now works faster than the old Core2 did with vista when I first got it!).

Don't know why its taken so long for me to do this upgrade - I've been using and developing apps on Linux/Solaris at work for years, so I know how reliable it can be. Just never used it on the desktop until now. ANd I'm definitely not looking back.

[NiceCupOfTea]

That's good, but a vanilla install of XP/W7 would have had it flying again anyway! You know what old windows installs are like...