The new Mercury

Mercury I suddenly decided to quit working. When Slackware booted, it reported lots of disk related unregularities. Window XP never complained. Probably because it is too stupid. Anyway, at a certain moment, XP also started to complain (by not booting anymore).

I checked all I could check. I ran memory diagnostics, disk diagnostics, even tried the rescue disks. And nothing helped. At that time, the computer was still within the warranty period so I returned it to the supplier for a checkup. After more than two months I asked how long it would take before I could expect it back. 'Well', was the answer, 'count on another two months!'. But the supplier (Komplett) found this unreasonable so they offered me money back, or find me a laptop from their shop for the day-value of the MSI.

That was an easy choice: I went for a Toshiba laptop of which they still had one in stock. Just enough for me. We have been using this Toshiba now for over a year and I must say: it was cheaper than the MSI and it outperforms it by a mile.

Mercury II should not be listed here. It is dedicated to Windows only. For those cases in which school matters are important. Dutch educational system seems totally owned by MicroSoft. For every support CD-ROM you just NEED the latest version of Vista. So that's what Mercury II is used for.

And it's a good benchmark for the speed of Linux. One example: install a printer.

I installed a deskjet F2180 printer in Vista. After 45 minutes it was done.
I installed the same deskjet in Slackware with CUPS. After 5 minutes it was spitting out its testpage.

Page created on 11 March 2009 and

Page equipped with FroogleBuster technology