I buy computers like I buy cars – I bite the bullet and buy everything I want and then I drive it for 10 years or into the ground – whichever comes first. Unfortunately, after seven years of Microsoft Update “patches” my circa-2002 Dell Inspiron 8200 Pentium 4 notebook is too horrifically slow to to tolerate.

Unfortunately, because after watching the slo-mo train wreck following the release of Vista, I’m (Almost) Done With Windows, it’s time to upgrade – but not to a vanilla Windows machine.

So I bought a new HP Pavilion dv8 Notebook – Quad-Core i7 @1.6GHz, – 8GB RAM – and, for the moment, Windows 7 Pro.

However, as my family is all back east and I am laid up after knee surgery, my goal (by Jan 1st) is to be set up as follows:

1. Hardware, as above, running a stripped down 64-bit Ububtu 9.10 Desktop and VMware Workstation 7.

2. A virtual machine running 64-bit Ububtu 9.10 Desktop and as many of my applications as I can find Linux replacements for.

3. A virtual machine running Windows for legacy applications and apps that I just can’t find Linux replacements for.

   This capability can take one of three forms:

   • A fresh 64-bit Windows 7 install with my applications reloaded as needed and my data ported.

     The downside here is that the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit may be turbulent.

   • A clone of my 32-bit Windows XP system converted to a virtual machine.

     The downside here is that it will run even slower using a single core with a slower clock rate. Of course, the good news is that this will remove all temptation to keep doing stuff on Windows.

   • Or, one of each.

     The downside here is that I might spend time tinkering with Windows that is better spent re-learning Unix.

Playing around with my new machine – and getting a blue screen of death within 4 hours – has fueled my determination to get beyond Windows.

Let the adventure begin …