New Laptop Ordered

So, I've decided on my laptop specification and I ordered it... I've gone for a completely custom machine, without any Operating System.  Yes, after all my seeking I found a vendor able to produce me the machine I want without any Operating system.  The saving I made not having the operating system was significant.

So, I've had an Intel Core i7 Quad Core mobile processor (infact its HT, so its got 4 real cores and can run 8 threads) with 8GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM and a dedicated 2Gb nVidia 540 GT Graphics card... its a 15.6" form factor.  All for under £550!

The only place I've skimped is on the hard drives, where I've gone for just a single 250GB 5400 RPM SATA drive, but this is mainly due to drive shortages following on from the flooding in south east Asia.

But this is a lot of processing power for the money, the same power from DELL costs over £1250 on the XPS 15 product line, and it seems impossible to get the Windows License refunded from anyone.

I will be going shopping for a new 15.6" carry case/shoulder bag.

And my chosen Operating System is going to be a Ubuntu derivative, I had toyed with Linux Mint being my chosen distro, but having used it for a few days on a virtual machine I'm not happy with it.

But my favourite distro is Ubuntu, the base from which Mint came, and also the inspiration of different offerings with the KDE shell, Gnome Shell (with and without Unity) and Xfce.  So I think I'm now going to go with Ubuntu to use Gnome as and when I like, but with the Xubuntu-desktop package installed so I can use the Xfce interface whenever I like.