I have a buyer for the Inspiron 1545 now and the Alienware M11X has been ordered.

I have found a buyer for the Inspiron 1545 just before I signed the agreement to borrow the money from Dell Financial Services to pay for the Alienware M11X. The M11X does not have the new Intel i processors and weights more than a comparable Asus laptop with a different graphic card. The M11X weights less than 4.5 pounds. This is related to consumer satisfaction and depression. So I will realize this relation and carry on loving and liking this new laptop. I hope to pay off the loan with my tax return.

The sales preparation process for selling the Dell Inspiron 1545 used to a new owner.

The first step I figured was to find all the disks that came with this Dell Inspiron 1545 15 inch wide screen laptop.

I did find those. I need to have the restore disk so I can reinstall the OS so the new onwer can have a clean OS and start fresh. I may also look into some way of securely erasing the drive without crapping up the format so the restore disk will still work. So step one is good to go.

The step two is to back up all my user files on both the Windows side and the Debian side.

This may be difficult to make sure I have all the data in all the folders such as software user data folders. If I am going to get a new Windows 7 computer there may be some data and application transfer techniques these days to simply transfer the data from the Vista 64 bit on the Inspiron to the Windows 7 Home Premium on the new Alienware M11X. For now I am backing up files to a small external USB drive with 91 GB free space. This is one of the few USB drives I have that can be seen by Windows and Linux and Macs. I will also back up to my Linksys network drivebay. So step two is in progress.

Considering buying a Dell Alienware gaming laptop and selling the Dell Inspiron laptop.

Last winter my Internet provider offered me a discount on a netbook from Dell. Therein I discovered Dell computers and the Dell finance easy credit. I also discovered that the netbooks were available with Linux. I bought a netbook with Ubuntu 8 and that has since been upgraded by myself to Ubuntu 9 netbook remix and I have also installed now the Transmission OS from the Trinity Audio Group also known as Indamixx OS. This is a specialized Linux based music OS.

I then ordered an Inspiron 15 inch wide screen laptop from Dell. Then later in the summer I ordered a Dell Mini projector. I am now considering selling the mini projector and a screen I had bought on ebay. I am also now considering selling the Inspiron laptop and getting an 11 inch Alienware M11X gaming laptop.

It looks like I will be able to sell these 160 GB hard drives and only have a small loss.

It looks like I can get my money back for these two 160 GB hard drives I bought and get most of my money back from the sale. I will find out in about 10 hours if this is possible. I placed an add on a local web classifieds to do this sale.

I was still unsuccessful at installing harddrives in the Rackable Systems server.

I tried with two used IDE 160 GB drives and was still unsuccessful at installing hard drives in this server. I will stop buying things now for his project. I will perhaps sell off the harddrives.

I am fixing up the Rackable Systems server and then going to sell it, if someone will buy it.

I have learned some of the BIOS settings for the Rackable Systems server now. The hard drives I have tried to use in it are former systems drives, so I can not get the BIOS to see them. I need to reformat them but have so far not found a way to do that. I might try with a Mac computer to do it. I have not been able to do the formatting with a Windows or a Linux PC. I did buy two used 160GB hard drives on eBay. I will put these drives in and then test an install but not install then try to sell this server for the cost I paid about 300$ now.

I have Google Wave as of today.

I have Google Wave as of today. Google Wave is another word of mouth distributed Google service. In other words, one user invites other users they know. Google Wave profiles imitate Facebook. The profiles are public to all of Google Wave. I am not sure I will fill in my profile. I often set rules in technology for myself and then later break them though.

I have been playing Eve Online for almost two years now.

I have been playing Eve Online for almost two years now. It occupies a lot of my time at home on the weekends and weeknights and over night. I play this game almost well enough now to play for free. I opened a second account after a little more than 1 year. I have kept a fan fiction blog of my main avatar's adventures. I have learned that, yes, other players cooperate in playing this game. I have also been learning to use Excel during this time period and this game has given me exercises to practice my spreadsheet work. Also I have developed an "in game" business plan that has worked. All in all, I have had some social time chatting with other players from the USA, Australia and Europe. I have even chatted in French a little.

I did try to buy an account on World of Warcraft but this did not work out and I did not yet try that game. I also considered buying a game console. I did not consider myself a computer gamer in the 1990's. In the 1980's almost all my computing was gaming computing because the Commadore computers I had seemed limited to that given my finances. I did complete some school exercises in GIS programming and Fortran 77 programming in the 1980's and these were not gaming. In the 1970's I also played some games. In the 1970's I worked in programming with Fortran IV and data entry on punched cards and even played with the cards making little hang gliders from the cards. I also did some other non-work exploring and gaming and mostly school programming on BASIC in mini computers with terminal access. I was able to design computer games and computer graphics in the 1970's and 1980's. So my connection with gaming now continues.

I actually did end up getting my Palm schedule into Outlook 2007 using Google Calendar Sync.

Google Calendar and its sync software tool seems to have helped my Microsoft Outlook problem but won't help my Microsoft Entourage problem. Entourage can still not import anything from other programs. I think Microsoft make some very closed products. But that said, I now do have my Palm schedule in Outlook 2007. I learned that after a court case (I still believe it was this court case that popped the Internet bubble), other companies such as SAS have had access to adding things onto Microsoft office. So back to Palms... now I will see if I can get my Palm schedule into Evolution on the Linux side.

I have done a fair amount of work too with one of my more action oriented volunteer groups in Palm contacts as well. I have recorded scheduling details and micro-historical records along with contact information for other volunteers. I really may not need this info and the perfectionism I might express to access this info again from saved back ups might not be healthy. I also probably do not need to update this type of info to make up for not recording it for a year or two now. I will just have to live with the fact, that when I recorded this info it was useful and that I learned by it back then and may not need it now. I could start to record it again in some other way. I may though not need this part of my life and those records to have consistency. My time is better spent on something more current and perhaps a new system for recording the same details. In fact, now that I think about it the organization does have a recording system that I use with doc files.

I have started to use both Outlook 2007 and Evolution e-mail on my Dell Inspiron but I do not send e-mail from the Dell yet.

I was able to import e-mail on the Dell Inspiron using the Linux side of the computer and Evolution e-mail. I have not sent e-mail from Evolution and want to make sure I can take any evolution e-mail and transfer it back to the Mac.

I turned on Outlook 2007 and configured it to download e-mail but leave a copy on the server as I also do with my Macbook. It may be impossible to export e-mail from Outlook so I have not used it to send any e-mail or really create anything yet.

I am using Google Calendar successfully with my old Palm schedule and have also tried to synchronize the Google Calendar with Outlook 2007. This has not brought the Palm calendar into Outlook which is one goal I have for my calendar.

Again I feel slightly burned by an ebay deal but it is probably alright.

I thought I was buying PC 5300 RAM from an ebay seller but it turned out to be PC5400 which is I am gathering from ebay information some kind of Vista upgrade version of PC5300. I was trying to avoid PC 5400 in this purchase.

Saving up for OCZ netbook.

Rather than force money from a stone to buy the netbook immediately, I am going to save money for at least 3 months, if not 6 months or something in between. I may be able to manage 60$ to 120$ a month in savings. I have 60$ saved now. I need to save up 360$ for the cost of the netbook and tax.

I did buy some OCZ RAM memory for this netbook so far. This cost about 50$ on ebay for a new 2 GB stick of PC 53000 677 RAM. This is the correct RAM for this netbook.

I am looking at the OCZ DIY netbook.

Here are the specs on this netbook http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/diy_notebooks/ocz_neutrino_10-diy_netbook. I have an 80 GB hard drive I could use with it from my Macbook. This 80 GB hard drive was the original hard drive in the Macbook. The drive was replaced late last fall and the drive was been just sitting here not being used, in case of being needed for restore. The Macbook is working fine now, so I think this old drive can be used for something else now like as a netbook hard drive.

I have transfered all the 1997 and 1996 e-mail to my netbook.

I have successfully transferred all the e-mail from my Mac Perform 580CD from 1996 and 1997 to my netbook. I did not really read any of this old email at the moment. I only have 1998 e-mail to still transfer. The e-mail from 1998 to 2000 is I think lost on a Windows 95 PC I never backed up.

I can now import all my e-mail to my netbook.

I am organizing my e-mail now in Evolution on the Netbook. I have imported all the 1996 e-mail which is the oldest email I have electronic copies of. I will also try to import this e-mail into Pine and access it with Emacs. I am trying to move towards more free software use.