Refreshing my laptop

Ubuntu 10.04 is only a few days away and I’ve decided to do a complete new install of my laptop. First thing I want t do is replace the 120gig Hard drive with a nice new 320gig Hard drive. 2.5 inch notebook drives have really come down in price and to be honest I tend to low on space all the time. Usually I just shift stuff around but what I noticed was that I didn’t make full use of virtual machines because of the space.

I however wonder if I should make the switch to the 64bit version of Ubuntu but I’m worries about apps like Skype, Hamachi, Java and maybe XBMC/Boxee. I’ve had 4gig of memory for ages and been restricted to 3267meg for ages. There must be more advantages to 64bit processing that just more memory allocation I’m sure. I was thinking if worst came to worst, I could just run Ubuntu 64bit an 32bit side by side, I mean I’ll have the space to do it plus I could maybe even share the home directory to ensure consistency between the platforms?

Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io