Well, I finally received my laptop and in fact, I am writing this blog entry on it using OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 during my Professional Practice (CS3997) lecture ;). I succeeded in formatting the hard drive and installing Mandrake Linux 10 over the network from my desktop computer. I had to install over the network because the Toshiba 3110CT does not come with a CD-ROM drive. To install over the network I needed to create a bootable floppy disk with my desktop using the utility that comes with Mandrake. I then booted the laptop from the floopy disk drive that came with the laptop and provided FTP information to connect to my desktop. Overall the Mandrake install was very easy and straightforward. The setup program detected all of the laptop’s hardware and even installed power management features.
Even though the laptop is only a Pentium II 300 Mhz with 128 MB of RAM, it is running very good. Web pages are loading fast, word processing is smooth, and I have even played an Xvid movie with very little skipping.