Ubuntu In The Workplace

Currently I am a PC Technician at a place called Pomeroy IT Solutions. My job for the most part consists of configuring and repairing computers for multiple companies in a timely fashion. However due to lack of work recently (Most likely due to the horrible economy) I have come to face my mortal enemy... Boredom! So what does a computer tech do when he's bored and has thousands of PCs at his disposal?... Well here's what I did.

Normally the PCs we configure run on Windows 2000... Boring!!!
So with my recently aquired Ubuntu CD that I brought with me today (I was actually going to give it to a co worker but he can wait) I installed ubuntu on this Lenovo (IBM) Thinkcentre.
Model number for those of you who care 9645-CC5
It has about 256 MB of ram with (some of you may want to sit down for this) a 1.6 GHz Celeron Processor.
To be honest I didn't think it would actually run given that these are pretty outdated by today's standards. But to my suprise, it did, and very smoothly might I add.

Even with the additional desktop effects such as Desktop Cube, Motion Blur, etc. It still is running like a beast!

Now for the funny part.
Normally when we put windows on this machine it doesn't have any of the drivers preinstalled, which means we have to take out or handy driver CD and load them all up (we avoid this by just ghosting the whole machine now) but with Ubuntu it picked up on all the hardware. ALL OF THE HARDWARE!!!!... WOW I can't even do that with Windows XP on my machine. Needless to say today's boredom experiment made me a very very happy Ubuntu camper.

P.S. I ended up giving my co-worker the CD after I was done with it. He can't wait to go home and try it out!

SSD is the new hard drive?

Okay so it's been out for a long time now but developers are just now getting around to making it "worth while". SSD is essentially a flash card. Just imagine the possibilities. Now instead of having your hard drive running, faulting out, and essentially sucking power your computer will be run off of a SSD. What is SSD you may ask? It stand for Solid State Drive. Developers like Toshiba are making SSDs that can hold up to 256 GB. That's about the size of a HDD that's installed on almost any computer you buy at circuit city. How freaking amazing. The great part about it is well these drives are basically amazing. Take for instance your typical jump drive. Have you ever noticed how durable those are? I ran mine through the wash once, let it dry out and it still worked. Wow. So in short this new technology could in turn replace the HDD and set a new standard to memory management. I'm pretty excited about it. The possibility for this technology to become apparent in laptops is basically a given. With read speeds at 120MBps and write speeds at 70MBps through a SATA connection. I think I need to go to the bathroom!