Well I have given in and bought an Acer Aspire One D250 netbook. And it's a red one too. And yes, I had to pay the Microsoft tax to get the operating system I DON'T want (XP Home).  So I promptly downloaded Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix Edition. gparted'd my drive and installed it - WOW! The Mutter window manager is good - especially for netbooks. It's a pity some of the applications windows don't always fit the 1024x600 screen: eg, Easytag, some parts of Thunderbird 2. But overall I'm impressed. Every bit of hardware works except the front wireless LED/switch (The wireless works out of the box - you just can't switch it off with the front hardware switch - very minor).

This netbook is an excellent buy and once coupled with the Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Netbook Remix, it's Fabulous! Freedom IT can supply you with these and install Ubuntu to boot. Contact us today.

Found this link that I used to downgrade a customers new VGN-CR14GN Sony Vaio Laptop to Windows XP (Sony DO NOT supply XP drivers for this laptop on their website)
Click Here

UPDATE: Sony now provide Windows XP drivers and applications for some of their 'selected' Vaio's: Click Here for the link

Well I've managed to update the theme on my motorola. I did download and install an iPhone theme and it was cool, even with startup and shutdown screens but it's not an iPhone. It's a Linux phone so good ol' Tux features in the theme and is quite cool.

I've also installed a console (yay, command line - what's Linux without the CLI!), some bibles (3 versions) - very handy on the go, and other file managers and tools.

Sometime soon I want to try out the Funambol Server/Client syncing and try to get that working with SugarCRM.

Well, I've managed to update the A780 to a 'transition' firmware (AP:61). This suits me since it is an 'unbranded' Motorola generic firmware (no China Mobile splash!). It now recognises the 2Gb Transflash card that the previous firmware wouldn't.

Took me a little figuring out and sweating to do (I thought I had hosed it for a while!). I needed to update to the 74 first (since doing the 61 5 step process failed on crucial steps) and then come backwards to 50 and then up to 61.

I've also installed some apps and midlets:

• Opera Mini 3 (Opera Mini 4 didn't seem to want to talk to the GPRS network even though it asked me if it could)!. This is quite a nice mobile browser.
  
• ezxmmsplayer - xmms for mobile - plays ogg. Yay!
• sugarsel - sugarcrm client - not so great, lacking the featureset I was hoping.
  

Well you know you're geeky when you go and buy a cellphone that runs Linux! I purchased a Motorola A780 (Linux OS) real cheaply off Trademe. It is a 'China Mobile' branded cellphone but works on Vodafone NZ. I am hoping to 'upgrade' the firmware and add more features/programs such as a SugarCRM java client, Ogg media player, etc.