What good is Bluetooth on a laptop?

[RyanD]

That's good to hear! I have not been keeping tabs on Ubuntu/Linux since about February of this year being as that's when I bought my Win 8 laptop. It's about time they made something user friendly. I felt like I needed a degree for the older versions.

linux is still...well linux no matter how you slice it. its a great OS if you know how to use it. honestly its not supported enough to make it as user friendly as windows.

DEEV: honestly i think the BT is a gimmik like you said. ive had a desktop with bluetooth and honestly its dumb and useless. on the small chance you can find a BT printer its nice to have for laptops and desktops alike.

[RyanD]

Werd. I'll have to give that a try! I've always been intrigued by Linux, but never enough to go through with installing it. As frustrating as Windows can be, it's just so user friendly and well supported.
Windows is the fast food of operating systems. You can find it everywhere, and you know what you're getting. It might not be great, but it does the trick. It's familiar and comforting. Mac is like fancy, expensive food. If you like it, you love it. But if it doesn't offer something you like, you're left with something frustrating and confusing, if well made. Linux is like vegan food. Something that only the fringe weirdos seem to like, though it's probably the best thing... if you can get used to the weirdness of it!

I know I'm now taking things way off topic... but I've been considering a dual boot setup just to try out Linux. Now that you mention those versions, Mike, I'm even more interested in it. Is it worth it to do a dual boot? I've been contemplating buying another hard drive as well (my current 1tb is nearly full!) Would it be a better idea to do a dual boot using a different hard drive?

linux is fun if you have the will to learn how to do things with it. like H311RA151N said its very diffrent.

Ubuntu is by far the most popular with linux mint being a spinoff that is quickly catching up on popularity. IMO if you just want to do bare bones computing like for internet use and school work linux is a great option. since it has fewer bells and whistles than windows and Mac its much faster. it has a lot more than Google Chrome OS which makes it a lot more fun IMO and a shit ton less internet dependent.

since your 1tb is almost full i would dual boot from another HDD.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is the one you want. every 4 releases Ubuntu releases an LTS which stands for Long Term SUpport and is the most stable version and IMO is the only one worth running. Ubuntu puts out a new non LTS version every 6 months IIRC

With the LTS versions anything in that OS is refined so there are likely to be few bugs, however, ubuntu may run into compatibility problems no matter what version you are running. it really depends on if the OS has the drivers to run the hardware in you system. very rarely your system will run flawless out of the box. but the LTS versions increase the chance that it will. when you first boot up some things may not work. Ubuntu has been good at offering an easy fix solution lately so it may be quite easy to get everything working flawlessly

[H311RA151N]

linux is still...well linux no matter how you slice it. its a great OS if you know how to use it. honestly its not supported enough to make it as user friendly as windows.

DEEV: honestly i think the BT is a gimmik like you said. ive had a desktop with bluetooth and honestly its dumb and useless. on the small chance you can find a BT printer its nice to have for laptops and desktops alike.

And how many people "know how to use it?" Not very many and most people would need to take a class just to do normal stuff. It sounds extreme but that's not an exaggeration. It's that hard to use. However the reward from being proficient with it is hefty.

[RyanD]

And how many people "know how to use it?" Not very many and most people would need to take a class just to do normal stuff. It sounds extreme but that's not an exaggeration. It's that hard to use. However the reward from being proficient with it is hefty.

not many lol. mass quantity of google searching and you could learn the basics in a day

"sudo apt get update" is you best friend

[H311RA151N]

not many lol. mass quantity of google searching and you could learn the basics in a day

I did that for a year. And... well... I believe you remember the outcome. Smashy smashy.

In all seriousness, eventually you get the bugs worked out and you start to understand it if it doesn't get the better of you like it did me. I really liked it for a period of time. Part of my issues were hardware compatibility issues and stupid crap that never made any sense. Like randomly not recognizing RAM cards and wireless adapters and stuff like that. Or the keyboard. Things I never had issues with on Win 7.