Latest geek project

[JamminR]

In my job, I work with technology. Few of you close to me have gotten bits and details of what I do more than others.
I don't talk about it much. Why? Because I try to separate my career from this hobby. Some other reasons too, but the close ones to me know what some are.
Occasionally the career brings me benefits that aren't expected.
Two to three years ago, My first laptop was obtained as a perk. (Paid $25.... it's mine... a Dell P3 C6xx.)
My latest laptop too was obtained as a perk. (Long term loan they call it...yeah, sure...I 'led to believe' I keep it, can't ever sell it, etc)
It's a Dell D600..1.6(or 8?) when at full speed, Pentium-M... pretty nice.
The PC didn't have wireless (these were bought for a secure area years ago). I just got what is supposedly a 'new' internal wifi for $9.99
(FREE SHIPPING!!! (Wait...why did the same seller have an Ebay auction for $5.99 with no free shipping ))

Well, first thing I did with it was google Macintosh D600. Lo and behold, an article exists with step by steps for Mac OS X on a Latitude D600
I've always been a *nix fan. I really only use Windows for the gaming. (No, Wine, though come a long way, is still not top speed directx compatible)
I now have a nice laptop running Mac OS X. I've had to reinstall several times, because not only do I have Mac OS X, I have Ubuntu 10.04 running also.
Except for only having a PCMCIA wireless card working in Ubuntu, I really like both operating systems.

Remember folks, pick on Mac or Microsoft as much as you want... both were basically copies of original works. OS X = Unix. Windows = copies of lots of previous stuff. (Yes, my opinion, i don't have links)

I've just gotta say.... Windows should have Synaptic for Windows.
I guess that will be my next random search hour(s)

[Megiddo]

Awesome stuff, let us know how that goes!

I'm seriously considering getting a mac pro and dumping my windows machine if Steam for Mac pans out well.

[JamminR]

Thinking it would be fun to find out if there was a way to change the Dell D600 Post screen, I found Dell's very own splash.exe.
It modifies many of Dell's portable older latitude models to allow a 640x480x16 color (4bpp) image as a Post screen.

My D600 now boots with the attached image. (Note, splash.exe only allows bmp files.. I've attached a jpg for 'standard' web-ization.)

I'd hoped that the 'progress bar' of the normal dell screen would still show, and perhaps the standard 'press f2/f12' option text.
Neither do, only the image. It only shows for about 3-5 seconds. Just long enough for the neighbor I showed it to (who I'd already shown the Mac OS X running on it) to go... WAIT...What?! Let me see that again.
I hit the pause key on the second go round.

I'm going to research a bit more to see if I can edit the image to perhaps still show a progress bar.
I know I can add text to it, but wonder if there's a possibility of adding a certain 'blank' color box area that a progress bar fills in.
Just a research thought.

[Megiddo]

Do bmps have a transparency layer? Maybe it uses that information for the progress bar