Toshiba Satellite 110CS installing pdf reader, installing linux
 

Hi

This is probably a really easy question, but unfortunately I don't know the answer.

I want to read ebooks in bed. I couldn't afford an ebook reader so I purchased a toshiba satellite 110CS from Ebay.

It has a floppy disk drive and a 810 mb hard drive. It presently has Windozs 95 installed on it. I managed to find adobe acrobat v 3.01 for it which I have downloaded. It is 3.8mb.

My question therefore is how to I get anything onto the laptop? Or have I made a terrible mistake?

I have had a look at some floppy linux, mulinux, 'linux on a floppy', tomsrtbt, pocket linux and Basiclinux, which looks very suitable for old pc's and laptops.

Also found this:
http://www.nomdo.dds.nl/linux.htm which talks about xpdf, but I don't want eh open office or Opera.

Has anybody used any of these on the Toshiba? Is it as easy to install linux on a laptop as a desktop? Is there anything I need to be particularly aware of?

The largest ebook I have is 900 kb fine for a floppy.

Thank you.

Regards

Nappy

I haven't used BasicLinux, but that's a pretty low-spec machine, they came "stock" with 8 mb of ram, which is about as low as you can go and still have Linux boot. Yes, some distros run with less, but 32mb is typically a minimum for running X/gnome/kde, 64-128 is about as low as you'll want to go to nullify boot times and lag to a usable point, and you'll need X/gnome/kde to run any pdf reader.

I hate to say it, but unless you have significant RAM loaded into it, or have some old ram laying around that will work with it, you're probably best just leaving it as a Windows machine, especially if it's mainly an ebook reader. Just buying old ram for it, if you can find it (most of that old RAM is highly proprietary, few people added ram to laptops back then, it cost too much, you bought what you needed with the machine and generally let it be), will likely cost you more than a newer system that's far more powerful. In the same vein, a lot of that old hardware was very unfriendly to Linux, although it's likely that's changed in the interim.

And whatever you do, don't fall asleep with it on your chest. Those old, heavy machines will suffocate you in your sleep! :)

Update: Personally, I use a Palm for ebooks, it took some work to figure it all out, but you can transfer almost any PDF to the palmdoc format, using plucker or xpdf-based tools. Cheap Palms are under $100, they're small and light, last fairly long on battery, have an auto-shutdown after a couple minutes (handy for reading yourself to sleep), you can add some free games for amusement while waiting in line at the DMV (sudoku!). Was probably the best investment I made for "killing time", and because it fits in a jacket pocket, it goes pretty much everywhere with me, so I'm rarely "bored" waiting for time to pass, and now the problem is finding time to read the books I'm constantly adding to it. http://www.palmopensource.com/ is a good link if you go this route.

Ah, sorry I didn't give any specs.
It's a 110CS
16mb ram
810 mb hard drive
100 mhz processor

So not enough ram at 16 mb.
Okay.

That made me chuckle, it is small and weighty.
I have been looking at PDA's, but I wanted to stay away from the ones that had to be proprietary. The ebook company I have found mainly do PDF's. Some in Mobipocket which is what the PSION use. I have also considered MP3/4 players, but the screen is too small. And I have looked at IPAQ's.

I paid £24 for the Toshiba, which I thought wasn't a bad price for an ebook reader. I have since found out that an external CD rom drive can be connected through the parellel port. My computer fixer may have one that I can use to load Adobe.

I would love to be able to use linux though. Even though it is just as a PDF reader, I know it would zip along a lot faster with linux and I won't have to keep reformatting it, just because.

Regards

Hi,

Just an update.

Have decided to get rid of the Toshiba. I am going to get a slightly higher spec. 32 mb memory and cd rom drive, windozes 98?

The clincher was Adobe Acrobat for Windozes 95 was unable to read all of the up to date pdf files. Nothing worse for reading a book than 1/2 pages missing here there and everywhere.

Regards