switched home pc from vista to ubuntu

i have a > 5-yr old thinkpad t400 with windows vista business and noticed that time was taking it’s toll on it so started rescue and recovery (thinkvantage blue button)

rescue and recovery has started for a minute when I remember that it might be a good idea to disconnect some of my license keys etc (itunes disconnect accounts, and other software i have) and luckily there is a cancel button in the progress bar.

or not… lucky enough
i clicked on cancel then it restarted
then windows is broken (cannot load winload.exe etc etc)
cannot even get to thinkvantage again (apparently it uses windows boot to get there)

so i needed to recover my windows vista:
* i did not have rescue and recovery disk (yes, i know i should have)
* but my DVD/CD reader/writer is no longer reliable (did i say time has taken it’s toll)
* i have no vista CD (even if i had my CD drive is not working)

so seems i have these options:
1- get a new CD/DVD drive then find a recovery CD (any variant of windows i guess should work)
2- have bootable USB with Windows 7 (implies that i have to have windows 7)
3- take a leap of faith and install ubuntu

I was able to borrow a windows CD then figured I should give my CD drive a chance. Slowly creeped it’s way into the recovery mode but never got there. So ok, maybe I should go for USB bootable Windows 7 tomorrow (need another PC for this).

Or…. try Linux from USB if it will work fine on my machine. And so I did and it worked (fast….) and shutdown fast too. I was left with no choice but to switch (well not really, I left my Lenovo recovery partitions in case I could fix Vista later on)

So this is now being written on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop. And so far so good.

Except:
1- no native support to stream Netflix instant videos (since they run Silverlight) but was able to find Netflix Desktop (seems to be WINE + Silverlight + Firefox)

2- no GotoWebinar support (no easy work-around so instead of spending time I just used my iPhone for now).

the new journey with Ubuntu continues…