upgrade destop or revive laptop?

[insomaniacal]

Have you considered just buying an external (USB) HD? You could just boot from USB all the time and you could probably get a good amount of storage for the money. Make sure you mobo supports USB booting first though... xD

That being said... There was an awesome deal at Staples, $50 for a 1TB external drive. Whether or not it's still going though, beats me.

[astromech_kuhns]

i thought about booting from external yes, but the only problem is a lack of portability, i might as well go with a upgrade to my desktop if that were the case.....

BUT......!


as fate would have it, i ended up receiving a very nice brand new laptop. my uncle bought a brand new HP for business, but didnt end up using it, so instead gave it to me. it was used very little before given to me. actually since getting it, the video card is nice so i bought kotor 2 and did start gaming a bit. and my desktop will be made a server or a firewall. but as fashizzlepop said, before this happened i was not interested in gaming. fate just had it that i ended up with this.

i also am currently putting debian on virtual box.

[fabianhjr]

Congratz for your new laptop and for going Free Open Source!

[neuromanta]

I don't know why most people think that they should run windows, and install a linux on a virtual machine... why not run linux, and install windows in a virtual machine? Btw, using wine under linux to run windows games is more convenient than runing linux in a virtual machine to use it for - any type of - hacking. Hacking under windows is very limiting.

[fabianhjr]

Unless you are an skiddie in which case Windoze is the best option. Think about it! All the malware infected "tools" batches wrapped by a program with a GUI are for Windoze.

No, just kidding and it is a first step. Next thing you know he is compiling his custom kernels and is a usual committer to the Linux Kernel project.

[astromech_kuhns]

I don't know why most people think that they should run windows, and install a linux on a virtual machine... why not run linux, and install windows in a virtual machine? Btw, using wine under linux to run windows games is more convenient than runing linux in a virtual machine to use it for - any type of - hacking. Hacking under windows is very limiting.

wine doesnt run all games and i dont think it supports the game's i am wanting to play.

also i have heard, that windows 7 under a VM doesnt run well.

[insomaniacal]

Not to mention, the benefits of Linux for "hacking" don't tend to be extremely obvious until you get quite a bit in-depth, and even then, there are often Windows implementations for similar functionality.

[fabianhjr]

That is a lie as the cake. The pie by the other hand is that _any_ Operating System should run in a VM. A VM has all the functions and depending on the processor the very similar efficiency. Win7, XP, Vista, Server 2008, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Ubuntu, Debian. They all run in a VM with the same issues(They all got at least 1) they have with the real thing. In my experience VMs are quite useful and facilitates my Cross-Platform Development/Debugging.

Why don't you do some testing and find out by yourself?(Either way you need a Win7 license)

[insomaniacal]

That is a lie as the cake. The pie by the other hand is that _any_ Operating System should run in a VM.

In a perfect world, you are correct, however, this is not the case as referenced:

Virtualbox Compatibility.

Of course, there are obviously other Virtual Machines you can use, but each one has it's strengths and weaknesses in this field. I have no experience in running Win7 on a virtual machine, but according to that page, Win7 should run fine in Virtualbox.

[fabianhjr]

The keyword is should. Some form of misunderstood bug could rise. There could also be some issues in the DRM side. I am not saying it will; I am just saying it should.