As I have mentioned before, I was in dire need for a new production machine since my current laptop was getting very unreliable. This week, my shiny new Dell XPS m1330 arrived at my doorstep. The thing has 4 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive and generally kicks ass all around. I am currently in the process of setting up the new machine and moving all my production assets over. I have already installed Mint 4.0 on it after I couldn’t get Ubuntu Studio (which I wanted to use originally) to even recognize the soundcard properly. So much for audio/video editing on that thing. Go figure…

Anyway, Mint runs great and supports all the features of the laptop out of the box. Even the media remote and build-in camera work. The fingerprint reader and build-in microphone are the only two things that need additional packages (which I am not going to bother with right now).

I expect to have everything moved over and set up by tomorrow. This means that we will have another little delay with the podcast this week but I am determined not to drop this week’s show. Please bear with us. This upgrade was a necessary step and I think a reliable recording and production machine will benefit the podcast in general a lot. I will give a detailed review on my experience with this laptop (along with photos of the unboxing) soon.