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Hello, I've just recieved my TP360CSE laptop. It's been quite one month since I ordered it. It is produced in Scotland ! It comes in a rather small box. This is a 4Mo/340Mo configuration. It comes installed with a few software packages. These include: - IBM PC-DOS 6.33 - Windows 3.11 - Lotus Organizer - Lotus CC:mobile mail - Lotus CC:Mail (I have to check that) - Acrobat Reader (??) - Flight Disk - Lotus ScreenCam - CoSession... The first problem is that all this softwares come WITHOUT ANY INSTALLATION DISKS. Not even for DOS nor Windows. There's nothing for Thinkpad and IBM Vesa software also. I called IBM for this because I thought it was a mistake from them. In fact, it seems the French (but also European) are the victims of a marketing decision. Although we are legal users of the software we cannot have the distribution disks without money ! This is really an amazing situation !! Moreover, the Lotus software comes without any documentation but just the licence registration card. I spent part of the week-end backing up my disk on floppies using the only available backup utility (CPBACKUP). There is approximatively 80Mo of software installed, I let you appreciate the number of required floppies !! Apart from this, my impression are rather good on the overall performances of the system. The screen is pleasant although it's only a Double Scan one. I intend the re-partition my disk to install Linux. I will keep a small portion of disk for DOS/Windows. I will perhaps install OS/2 Warp if there is enough room left. Concerning compatibility of Thinkpad with Linux. I installed kernel 1.1.75 on a bootable disk. I configured LILO so as to append the option "floppy=thinkpad". Everything booted nicely and the floppy drive can be accessed with no problem. I also tried to boot *BSD based operating systems. The NetBSD-1.0 bootdisk went through with no problem. I did not go any further with it. The FreeBSD-2.0 floppy went through but there is a problem with the keyboard as reported by someone on some news channel. In any cases, the hard drive was successfully detected and the correct geometry was reported. -------------------------------------------------------------------- St'ephane ERANIAN | Email eranian@chorus.fr Universit'e PARIS VII | eranian@litp.ibp.fr LITP - Laboratoire d'Informatique | Th'eorique et Programmation | 2 place Jussieu | 75251 Paris cedex 05 | --------------------------------------------------------------------