This category will be used to document all the hardware and software I use.

I’ll start with operating systems. All of my PCs run Windows - I occasionally foray into the Linux world within a virtual PC, but that’s rare. My laptop runs Vista Ultimate and has since I bought it in April 2007. I also have one Vista Ultimate desktop I’m using as a Media Center, and one Media Center 2005 desktop. Most of the other PCs in the house run XP Pro. I also have one PC running Windows Home Server.

My main laptop is an HP tx1119us. This laptop has a 12.1-inch screen at 1280×800, a dual-core AMD 64-bit CPU, 2Gb of RAM, and a 160Gb hard disk. I bought this machine for two reasons - its ability to run Vista, and its size. After carrying a 15-inch laptop around for years, I finally decided to go smaller and lighter. When I bought this laptop, I was looking at it and a similar-sized Toshiba unit. HP put this one on sale for several hundred dollars less than the Toshiba. I paid $1,150, but a nearly identical unit (with a touch screen) has been seen recently as low as $750.

This laptop came loaded with, well, crapware. I uninstalled everything I could, but it still wasn’t enough. I finally had to load Vista from scratch - fortunately HP’s web site included all the drivers I needed. So far, the laptop has had no problems and is very portable.