Today my new laptop arrived: an HP Elitebook 8530p. From what I've read, its a solid latop that should serve me well as my main machine. The only slight concern I have is running Vista with only 2GB... we'll have to see how that goes.

Unfortunately, I was so busy today that I didn't get to open the box! It just sat on the corner of my desk, distracting me until I finally put it on the table behind me. Tomorrow, though, I should be good to get it setup and configured. I'll be sure to post my impressions and experiences, along with a few photos if I can.

Originally I was going to downgrade to XP, mainly because McGill doesn't yet recommend running Vista on PCs on campus. I spoke with someone in the know today who informed that that restriction is due primarily to an incompatibility between the Banner client (~the university's ERP system) and Vista. However, as the fates would have it, I have nothing to do whatsoever with the Banner client, and so have nothing to worry about. I've been using Vista at home, and have had very few problems with it. I'm looking forward to using it exclusively.

For the record: I did originally opt for a similarly configured MacBook Pro, but that request was denied. The MBP is slightly thinner and lighter, but overall, you're still paying a few hundred dollars extra for the Mac, which was ridiculous, esp since I was going to be using it to run Vista almost exclusively. The new T series from Lenovo were similarly priced out of my budget.

There is a lot of stuff installed on my current machine, things that I will need to migrate over time to the laptop. Eventually, it will become my One Machine, although I expect that will take a few weeks to make happen.