Reply #8: Same here ...

[RoyGBiv]

I don't even like reinstalling Windows on a laptop. I always have to spend time beforehand seeking out drivers, and this has on occasion taken hours.

The last time I did it I ran into some silliness with a Soyo laptop that made me want to throw the thing into a dumpster. Seems the laptop came with Vista Home Basic. The owner had purchased Windows 7 and wanted to install that instead. Soyo didn't have any drivers for the laptop for any other OS but Vista Home Basic, and when I tried to go ahead and install that with their proprietary wrapper, it refused because the OS was "not supported." And this was the network driver, making experimentation a pain in the ass since I was having to download stuff on my machine and transfer it over. That became a whole different adventure in which I had to convince their server I wasn't using Linux.

I eventually figured out a way to do it, but I have no idea if what I did was legal or whether it will last. The person who owns the laptop said it's been working fine for two months, so it seems it'll be okay, at least until she needs some sort of upgrade.

OnEdit: A bit of irony. A Linux Mint Live disc booted and brought up the network immediately. In the midst of this insanity, I tried to convince her to let me install that, but she'd also bought MS Office for students and wanted to use it. I've given up arguing the point.