SemiConscious Dot Org

Once upon a time, the Special Lady Friend had a tablet PC that she loved dearly. Then one day several months ago, she accidentally dropped it while walking down the stairs. Sadly, the trauma from the fall permanently fried the tablet’s hard drive. Yours truly took it to a local computer store for repair, but they could do nothing: while a replacement hard drive was easy enough to install, they had no way of reinstalling the operating system, a special version of Windows XP designed specifically for tablets and not available commercially. It appeared the plucky little tablet was dead forever.

Following positive experiences installing Ubuntu on my laptop and home PC, I decided to see what it could do for a tablet PC. I installed a cheap replacement hard drive, borrowed an external CD rom from a friend (since tablets don’t have cd drives) and loaded 7.10 onto the machine. I figured that, while I would no doubt be able to get the tablet functioning as a regular laptop, I probably wouldn’t have any success getting all the specialized, tablet-only hardware to work.

How wrong I was! A cursory web search revealed that numerous people had already had success with the very same install I was attempting. By following these written instructions, I was able to get the tablet’s touch screen, stylus, screen swivel, onscreen keyboard, and handwriting recognition features working in about a half an hour. Another half hour and I had the software trained to read my handwriting. Once that setup was done, I unplugged the tablet’s keyboard and have used it solely as a notebook ever since. In fact, this post was written entirely by stylus.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the longer I use Ubuntu, the more unexpected functionality I discover in it, the more impressed I am with it, and the less reason I can find for why anyone in their right mind would continue to put up with all the bugs, patches, service packs, license fees, and other attendant bullshit associated with Windows.

Seriously people: the time has never been more ripe to throw off the shackles of the Redmond Borg Collective. Take about three hours out of your life to download Ubuntu, burn it on a disc, and load it on your PC. About a week later, you’ll find yourself deleting the unneeded Windows partition on your hard drive, and you’ll never look back.