A couple days ago, I helped a friend install Ubuntu on an old Dell laptop that was cluttered up with all the stuff that gets on a machine after years of Windows usage. He was so impressed at what a difference it made that I decided to let him explain what happened:

I was preparing for an upcoming business trip for which I needed a functional laptop computer. For the rare times I had a casual need for a laptop recently, I had been using a four year old Dell Inspiron 600m that I inherited from my son. He’d given it to me when it started to behave strangely and he had opted to get a new computer.

When I first got the Dell, I ran Norton System Works and it cleaned up enough errors in the registry and whatever to make the machine usable. However, it remained an “ugly” computer for a variety of reasons:

1. There was a tremendous amount of clutter from data and programs that were no longer in use. This clutter started with the “crapware” that came with the machine, and had been added to over the years. The 30 GB hard drive now had about 3 GB remaining free.

2. Every bootup caused a certain Lego program to start, and I had to click “exit” to make that window go away.

3. Every bootup produced an error message that a certain DLL was missing. My son told me that the DLL belonged to a program he had long ago removed, but something in the system still thought it needed to find that DLL.

4. Every bootup caused Norton to initiate some extended procedure. I’m not sure what it did, but it increased the time to have a functional computer by 2-3 extra minutes.

5. Norton would annoyingly remind me every time I started the computer that my virus checking and firewall information was out of date, and I needed to pay for new versions, which I didn’t much care to do for a machine this old.

6. Every time I loaded a file (e.g. Word or Excel) Norton slowed things down by checking for viruses.

7. The sound on the computer did not work. I tried everything I could think of in control panel, but nothing worked. I had concluded there was a hardware problem.

I knew I could backup all the data from the hard drive and just re-install the original Windows XP. This would clean up a lot of clutter, though I would still have the original crapware, vintage 2004. I would be free of Norton, but still vulnerable to viruses etc., unless I got some new virus protection software.

So I decided to let my friend put Ubuntu on this machine. I wasn’t sure how well this would work or how much I would like it, but it seemed worth a try.

Well, now that I’ve had this Ubuntu machine for a few days, all I can say is “I love it.” It’s like having a new toy. I love my clean desktop. Gone is all the clutter, the missing DLL messages, the slow bootups, the fear of viruses and/or need for anti-virus software. I have about 26 GB free on my hard drive. And guess what … my sound works again! It haven’t enjoyed a new computer this much since … well, since I got that TRS-80 back in 1981 (I think my age is showing).

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Distros, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.