Oh yeah, one last thing I forgot to mention. Tom got his computer today. It runs, he's happy, I'm thrilled. I got richly rewarded for my efforts: 1.) He let me keep the spare media dock, and it's now on my headless mobile server; 2.) I have one 30GB hard drive in my headless mobile server, and one on reserve for the experimental server that will be permanently connected to my DSL line; and a spare Notebook CD-ROM drive. (Too bad it's a sucky LG) He's also feedered me reimbursals on various and sundry costs throughout the "Pimp My Notebook Computer" process.

Gotta love ThinkPads. The Goddess' own Laptop. And judging from what this one guy from IBM was saying at SCALE, there is nothing to fear from the Lenovo takeover of IBM Personal Systems Division. Apparently there are enough IBM-ers that got hired over to Lenovo to keep quality up. And even though Lenovo is a Chinese company, they apparently know the Western fable about the goose that lays the golden eggs. The ThinkPad reputation is currently quite golden. If they ruin it by making crappy computers with the ThinkPad marque, (which they almost did with the i-Series) they will also ruin whatever value they hoped to get out of buying IBM PSD.