Speaking to DELL to get the RS232 on this laptop was fairly painless. Now they are arranging a technician to come and replace the motherboard and the hinges on the screen. The hinges are just loose, which is a common problem. The technician that came last time to look at the laptop suggested that I contact DELL and arrange a service call, and get it fixed. I decided to wait until the next call, which is now. All in all I was on the phone with DELL for about 7 minutes according to the timer on the cordless phone.

I have a *LOT* to do today. My first trick is to install Windows XP on my DELL laptop – the OTHER dell laptop. You know, the one that was deleted when I tried out the telephone software. Well, it is now installing – I did have some pain getting this to work. When the install was done, the HDD was re-partitioned. All to LINUX partitions. This is what I expected. But when I booted the Windows XP install CD things did not work all that well. The screen went black soon after it started, and just sat there with the HDD light blinking.

I eventually booted PartitionMagic software and deleted the partition table on this computer. This fixed things very quickly. Delete partition tables. Save. Reboot. Simple as that. I have just rebooted the first time, and so I need to finish here so I can enter some information like serial numbers and the like.