Thanks, I appreciate the review. seriously.

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 4:56 PM, Jim March <1.jim.march@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm running Intrepid right now on a Dell laptop with an Intel
> 965/X3100 graphics card, Intel HDA sound, Pentium dual core (basically
> the "low end" dual processor) with 2gigs RAM.
>
> This lappy was bought at Beast Buy on sale for $500 so it's hardly "high
> end".
>
> There are two things Intrepid is giving me over Hardy:
>
> 1) Better dual-monitor support.  System>Preferences>ScreenResolution
> is working *exactly* like it should, period, end of discussion right
> there in the GUI without any funky xrandr command line BS.  I can plug
> in an external monitor, detect it, adjust the resolutions of both and
> the relative layout of an expanded desktop unless I choose mirror
> mode.  It "just works".
>
> 2) I get Network Manager GUI controls for my Verizon cellular modem.
> I use a KPC680 in my ExpressCard slot.  It too "just works".  I'm
> experimenting with sharing it over Ethernet tonight with a friend's
> rig and will report back.  Before it was a matter of wvdial scripts
> and weird glitches associated with that.  Performance is great.  I did
> have to do some tuning in /etc/ppp/options setting both
> "lcp-echo-interval" and "lcp-echo-failure" to "0" to correct a
> "disconnect after five minutes" problem.
>
> Other than that detail, I'm not seeing any downsides with Intrepid.  I
> understand there are new drivers in the works for both ATI and NVidia
> for the new Xorg variant (which in turn is what's allowing killer
> dual-monitor support).
>
> If you don't need these features, there's little reason to switch.
> The minor improvements include a "guest mode" that's pretty slick (log
> in as you and then set it to "guest" and whoever you loan your rig to
> can't get to your stuff) and an encrypted private subdir in your home
> directory.  I always use whole-disk-encryption off the alternate
> install CD anyways so that's a non-issue for me.
>
> Note that my Alpha-to-beta install still had glitches once Intrepid
> went gold, and it refused to update to the newest kernel version.  So
> I had to do a clean install with the release edition...this is fairly
> common (and very annoying) about alpha/beta-testing Ubuntu.  A
> Hardy-to-Intrepid update now should be OK.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Jim
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