I've been looking at computers again.

This is a bad idea, as I find all kinds of stuff that's awesome.

So yeah.

Lenovo is having a sale on their Thinkpads right now, and I've seen Thinkpads and I'm enamoured with them right now.  They look functional and simple and can hide a bunch of power inside.  The only bad thing?  I have to buy it with a bloody Windows license.

System 76 has a great desktop machine that I'm looking at, but their smallest laptop is 14" and that's a little big for a secondary couch-surfing system.  I just want something about 12" that will run Ubuntu and is (preferably) under $600.  It has to be portable and it has to fit in a bag and be easy to carry around to coffee shops and easy to take home for a weekend.  Also, battery life.  Please be more than 4 hours on a charge...

I think I've got a pipe dream here.  ZaReason has an awesome laptop that's 13" and has a lot of the things I want, but it's closer to $800.

I don't know exactly what to do, but I'll figure something out.  I'm not planning on pulling the trigger on any of these systems til well after the new year... closer to March maybe.  

You might be asking what I'm looking for in a desktop...  Well, here we go:

• At least an i5 processor.
• 6-8 gb of RAM.
• 500+ gb hard drive.
• nVidia card... 1 gb thing that's on S76.  I don't know what it's called.
• Decent cooling.
• Low power usage.

Same with a laptop:

• Battery life; at least 4-8 hours worth.
• 12" screen is optimal; I'll go to 13" or 11" if I have to.
• Decent keyboard.
• 2-4 gb of RAM.
• 100+ GB hard drive.
• i3 processor (or equilivent).
• 3 USB ports.

Both of the machines MUST be able to run Ubuntu with MINIMUM of fuss.  If I have to fight with it, I don't want any part of dealing with it.  The desktop must run Windows 7 as a secondary OS with minimum of fuss.

I just want my stuff to work without a problem.  An OS shouldn't get in my way of what I want to do, and both Ubuntu and Windows 7 are at those points.

Maybe I'm picky.  Who knows.

And why I'm going with Choqok, even in Unity.

I upgraded to the new Gwibber.  For the most part, it's great.  BUT, there are some really niggling issues I have with it.  List time!

• I can't access my lists.  Or, I don't see an easy way to do this.
• Slow.  So so so slow.  Once it starts up, it's not bad, but it sometimes will hang my entire laptop.  I thought the updates were supposed to remove these issues.  Although they've been fewer recently.
• Two clicks to reply to a notice.  Not a huge deal, but now I have to click on the twitter/statusnet icon and then click reply.

Now, only to be fair, onto what I like about it:

• The new look.  Wow, looks great!
• Ubuntu integration.  This couldn't be better.
• Speed improvements (note that this is under the issues as well... It's in both because it's better than it was, but not where it really shoiuld be.).

Now,even with all of the KDE libs, Choqok seems to run faster and easier on both my netbook and my laptop.  It has decent integration with my Unity desktop, goog.l shortening, pictures inline, and the ability to have my lists open so I can see what's going on.  Oh, and now KDE apps seem to integrate better with Gnome because of QT, so that's nice.

I really miss the easy-to-see lists feature that the old Gwibber had.  I wish they'd bring back the interface they had becuase it was awesome, and almost perfect.  Not necessarily the prettiest, but it worked really well.

I'm not saying "bring back the old interface" because that's pretty much impossible right now, but maybe the devs could bring back some of its functionality.  I'm not sure what they wanted to accomplish with making the lists feature more hidden, but it's made me kind of frustrated.

Now, I'll go back to Gwibber.  For sure.  I'll see if there are updates, and definitely give it another go when iti does update.  I'd love to have it working again the way I need.

For now, I'll be using Choqok.

Actually, it's kind of neat.  I'm figuring out how things "work". It's different.

I think I like it.

The computer that it's installed on will be staying here at my mom's house til I move to my apartment, so I won't have a lot of time to play with it.

What I like:

• The overlays and the shiny.  It's quite pretty.
• The default wallpaper.  Very cool.
• Full screen apps.  Lots of space for work and reading (though this is a netbook, so I have less space than I do on my regular computer).
• Notifications; they're down at the bottom, so they stay out of the way.

What I don't like:

• So much is hidden.  I'm trying to figure out where my desktops are and everything.  I'll get it; it's just different.
• Settings; I haven't figured out all the settings.
• Speed.  It seems a little slow, but I only have 1 gig of RAM, so I don't have a lot to complain about.

I haven't had time to play with it a lot, since I installed it last night around 10 pm.  I'll give it another shot next weekend and try to use it all weekend next weekend.

Do note that Gnome3 is being run on my Starling netbook, 1 gig of ram, Atom processor.  I'm running it on top of Xubuntu 11.10.  I still have to see the new things in Xubuntu 11.10.  I don't think a lot has changed, but I'm sure there is something.

Anyway, I'll have a longer write-up when I play with Gnome3 more, and when I play with Ubuntu 11.10 more.  I quite like it so far; it's speedy and pretty.  I'll write a review sometime this week.

Jono writes on his blog:

My thesis as to why is pretty simple: people learn by exploration. Let’s do a quick exercise. Write down on a piece of paper the last three devices that you purchased. They might televisions, cell phones, kitchen appliances, games consoles, or whatever else. Every one of these devices comes with it’s own interface to operate it. Now, how many of those devices did you sit down and read the instructions for? I am willing to bet it was close to none.

You learned those devices by poking around, trying things out, clicking, pressing, pushing, and otherwise playing with and exploring it. Many of these devices will have had entirely new interfaces to you which you had not used before, yet you figured them out. Some elements of the interfaces will have been obvious (e.g. buttons protruded to indicate that they can be pressed) and some elements less-so.

Now, I don't disagree with Jono, but I can see how confusing it could be for a new user to not have the close, minimize and maximize buttons up on the top where they are visible.  I was not taken by surprise when I upgraded the netbook, since I new the change was coming.  I can see that if someone wasn't expecting the change, they'd have a problem, but the new interface isn't really that different from the old interface.

I got to know Ubuntu by playing with it.  Matter-of-fact, I just installed Ubuntu to a friend's laptop; I'm hoping she will play with it and learn how things are done.  I think the interface is pretty easy to use, and I hope she will as well.

This experiment would prove to me that anyone can use Ubuntu.  She's not a computer whiz at all, but I think trying a different OS will help her overcome her fear of "breaking" something.  Seriously; I've set up her laptop wtih all the programs she needs, and she can easily find other programs in the software center... Updates won't be a problem, since I've set up her password and automatic updates.

We'll see.  This project just came into my hands because she hated Vista and I can't see making her drop $200 for Win7, especially if she just uses email and browsing and some light games.  This way she won't be stuck with a virus or something.

Yay for spreading the open-source love.