Notebook Recommendations

[Albin Blaschka]

Hello,

Behrang Saeedzadeh schrieb:

> One question: Can I restore the system to the original configuration
> if I repartition it and install Ubuntu on it?
> 
> The reseller told me something strange: I can restore the system to
> the original configuration by just pressing the blue Access IBM key
> during system initialization. Is this true or I have to backup the
> system to an external media?

Thinkpads have a hidden partion on the harddisk with all necessary data 
on it
to re-configure or re-initialise the machine, it is called Pre-Desktop-Area.
As long as you keep this, it is no problem to reconstruct the original 
configuration. I did not do that, I took another way: IBM delivers on 
demand Installation disks of Windows XP. With them it is no problem to 
re-initialise the laptop, either ;-) So, I ordered this CD-Set and then 
used Knoppix with QTParted to repartition (a boot-partition, a 
swap-partition, a root-partition - quite minimalistic), left a little 
bit space for WinXP *at the beginning* of the Harddisk as (it should be 
"hda1" in "Linux-Speech" or first primary partion) windows needs that to 
be able to boot and installed at first debian and then ubuntu on the 
other partitions, grub recognised windows on the disk, configured it 
correctly and of we went ;-) another Dual-Boot-System was born.

With the installation cds you can even just re-install windows on the 
partition, it does not wipe the whole disk, you then must re-install 
grub on the master boot record, windows erases it...(use a live cd for 
that, but that is another story...)

*BUT* A backup of your important data is *never* a bad idea! and 
specially if you do some repartioning and reformating...

See also: 
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-46023

Hope that helped!

Albin