[dovemouse]

Hi, I am about to purchase a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T41 laptop from ebay.
Specs:
- Intel Centrino 1.6 Ghz
- 1024Mb RAM
- 40Gb Hard Drive

I would very much like to install ubuntu on this system as i have a bit of experience with it. I would also like to install Photoshop. Reading up on it, it looks like i have a choice between CrossOver and Wine. Both seem to have errors when running photoshop. I am a freelance photographer/web designer and i am wandering if this laptop is up to the job. In my home i have a Netgear router with 4 ethernet ports (3 in use) is there anyway of converting one of them to wireless so i can use the laptop freely.

Any other tips/problems with my plan would be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

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I would recommend more hard disk space... if you are dealing with high-res photos it's going to eat up that space faster than you think...

Wine will run Photoshop 7 as I have gotten it to work before... I have also heard that CS2 has some issues with both Wine & CrossOver... so yes, you should take that into consideration...

Ubuntu is a quality desktop OS and does a alot... too bad the software vendors won't get onboard with Linux....

[thenotch]

I would recommend more hard disk space... if you are dealing with high-res photos it's going to eat up that space faster than you think...

Wine will run Photoshop 7 as I have gotten it to work before... I have also heard that CS2 has some issues with both Wine & CrossOver... so yes, you should take that into consideration...

Ubuntu is a quality desktop OS and does a alot... too bad the software vendors won't get onboard with Linux....

[dovemouse]

I have a 160GB external hardrive....should do the trick. Yeah very annoying, you'd think with the overwhelming number of users of linux they'd latch on by now.

What about graphics? I'm not actually sure what graphics card it comes with.... (CounterStrike:Source??)

Would I be able to connect to Other windows PCs on the network and visa versa?

[thenotch]

If I am not mistaken your graphics card has to support 15bit or 24bit graphics otherwise you might get a "range out of sync" error.

I would find out what the graphics capability are of the laptop.

Ubuntu will allow you to connect to other PC's on the network using Samba.

[dovemouse]

OKay that's cool. I'll check the graphics out.

Any ideas on the wireless network issue? I have a wired router. I'm looking for a little wireless adapter that plugs into a male ehternet cable...or something along those lines...

[ThPenguinsRComin]

I'm pretty sure you'd need a wireless router for that. I've never seen a simple adapter like you've been describing. Good news is that you can just plug the wireless router into the empty slot in the wired one, though (if you want). Just stick them next to one another and use a short ethernet cord between them.

Or you could replace the old router completely. There are lots of wireless routers with multiple ports, so you can use them for both wired and wireless access.

[thenotch]

If the laptop has a PCMCIA slot you can just get a wireless PCMCIA card and connect to a wireless router that way. Ubuntu will pick that up as long as the PCMCIA card isn't some completely off-the-wall, unheard of PCMCIA card...

The router, if it is a wired router, obviously will not handle wireless. You will need to invest in a wireless router.