Widescreen LCD monitors are laptops are all the rage now. Wikipedia cites lower associated manufacturing costs.

Basic geometry and algebra explain why manufacturers are saving money and consumers may be deceived about what they are getting.

Monitors are measured along the diagonal. A 14" widescreen sounds like a '14" screen...only wider", but it is not. It a screen with a wide width-to-height ratio, such as 16-to-10, with a diagonal that that measures 14". The wider and flatter a rectangle gets for a given diagonal length, the smaller the area. That means a 14" widescreen LCD has less screen area than a standard screen with a 4:3 ratio. By my calculations, it's about 6% smaller, or the equivalent of removing about half an inch from the standard size 14" monitor.

The following Linux distributions are made especially for old hardware, and have been tested or used locally.

Xubuntu is recommended as a first choice for a light desktop, although perhaps it requires a little more resources than the other options listed here. Mark finds it very polished and pleasant to use. As part of the Ubuntu project, access to lots of other Ubuntu software programs and documentation are available if you need it. If already have Ubuntu installed and want to try Xubuntu, you can install the xubuntu-desktop package, making both the Gnome and Xubuntu packages installed. On the login screen, select "XFCE" as the session type. If Xubuntu is still too slow on your computer, read on...

Here are some easy tips to make your Linux desktop run even faster.

• Give up the wallpaper Try right clicking on the desktop and selecting the "Configure Desktop" to find an option to use a plain color instead of a photo wall paper. Ubuntuclips.org has a video walk through of this task.
• Disable File Previews UbuntuClips shows you how to do this for Ubuntu.
• Avoid OpenOffice OpenOffice is powerful and easy to use. It's also a memory hog. Consider Abiword for basic word processing and Gnumeric for spreadsheets. You could still install OpenOffice, but only launch it if you need it. In Ubuntu, the abiword-plugins package adds support for more file formats, making it easier to work with Word and OpenOffice files.
  

Firewire are USB 2 offer high speed ways to connect to devices, making them ideal ways to connect to external hard drives or digital video cameras.

For Linux Laptops, the Zonet ZUC2700 FireWire/USB2 PCMCIA card is recommended for laptops. In Mark's testing with Mandriva 2006, the card Just Worked by plugging it in, no special drivers or configuration were required. It includes a port plug in an additional power adapter. It's not needed for low-power applications like flash card readers, or when the external drive supplies it's own power, but may be need for an external drive that depends on USB for power. No power supply is included, but ZoNet support reports that the kind that should be used with it is: "a 5v, center positive, DC power adapter".

You can connect reliably to AOL with Mandriva Linux using the free 'penggy'
software, downloadable from here. Once
downloaded, you should be able to double-click the resulting icon to install
it.

It lacks a graphical interface, but is easy to setup and use none-the-less.
I set it up in just a few minutes and it connnected on the first try.

Here are some steps to follow once you have it installed:

1. Make sure your modem installed and working. That task is beyond the scope
   of this article. You can proceed and hope this is already working.

Challenges

Hopi wanted to trade in her desktop computer for a laptop to better match her lifestyle. She had a budget of $400 for the new system, plus any money earned from the sale of the old system, an expected value of $300. She was interested in Linux, but really liked the Microsoft Money program, and was concerned about finding a solution that would meet her needs at least a well.

Challenges

Martha's Mac Performa was dead. The monitor worked, but she needed a complete hardware and software solution otherwise. She could not really afford a new computer, and needed to spend an absolute minimum.

She lives three hours away and does not plan to connect her computer to the internet, so it would be difficult for me to help remotely. She needed a solution that required no training. She needed to be able to take care of her own system administration nearly all of the time.

However, her software needs were simple: She wanted to use a word processor and spreadsheet, and have Windows compatibility.

Challenges

I have been using open source on my home desktop machine since 2001. However, for my work desktop, I demand a higher degree of usability. At home I like to "tinker" with computers. At the office, I want my computer to be very stable and "just work" so I can get my job done.

When I my aging Mac showed signs of death in 2004, I felt that MandrakeLinux was up to the challenge of being the replacement system.

I wanted official support for Linux on the new hardware, and I wanted offical support for the software as well.

Most any standard wheel or optical mouse should work with Linux with no effort at all, including scroll wheel mice.

Laptops can often be taughth to emulate a scroll wheel using their builtin touchpad or TrackPoint. There's a page on the Thinkwiki site which explains how to emulate a scroll on Thinkpad laptops.