romeo

Model

• HP Vectra VL800 MT

Introduced

• 2001

CPU

• Intel Pentium 4, 1700MHz

RAM

• 1280 MB

Video

• nVidia NV28 [GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP 8x]

Disk

• 19 GB harddrive
  
• 37 GB harddrive
• DVD-ROM
• DVD-RAM

Network

• Wireless
  

Operating Systems

• Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)
• Windows 2000 Professional

Features

• Dual 21" HP p1230 displays in vertical configuration, attached to one dual-head video card
• Wacom Graphire graphics tablet with mouse and pen, rotated to support vertical display configuration
• HP LaserJet 4L black-and-white laser printer

romeo is my primary PC. Besides the usual functions, I do my photo editing and art work using the Graphire pen. With the Gimp — an image editing program — I can make the pen act like a paintbrush, eraser, airbrush, and various other tools (including a pen). I typically keep the tools in the top screen and the actual photo or graphic I'm working on in the bottom screen.

I also boot into Windows occasionally to run the few programs that just don't work in Linux. I've considered installing Wine so I can run them under Linux, but the last time I tried this it didn't go too well. I can live with the occasional reboot.

Running network cable for romeo would have been onerous so I opted for a 54Mbit/sec wireless network (theoretically about half the speed of my wired network).