Lessons learned installing an English version of WinXP on my netbook:
- If something fails, it fails bad. The only easy way of recovering is completely reinstalling from the recovery partition.
- Installing drivers for the mobile internet USB stick thingie is tricky: press the wrong button once and the driver installation dialog will never appear again. It seems that the USB stick automatically installs drivers on insertion, but it only works once. Forunately I had a copy of the driver from my old installation of XP, which I had backed up with Norton Ghost.
- Windows XP automatic updates are evil. Don't install anything except the security updates. In my case I accidentally OKed the install of IE8, after which I got a blue screen during startup that could in no possible way be fixed. As a more generic message: always make a backup right before you make an important change to your system. If you group a bunch of important updates together, you'll be very, very annoyed if the last update turns out to crash your PC.
- The battery on the 1101HA does indeed last 8+ hours (tested under load by downloading and installing updates, backing up harddisks and installing Windows...)
- January nights are cold
- Seriously! Cold!
- Dress properly. There is no excuse for this. I didn't wear enough and I felt very cold halfway through, despite pedaling like a maniac.
- Always bring enough warm clothes with you on a trip!
- For energetic cycling: listening to music helps greatly, but the selection matters a lot. In my case, listening to Eurobeat mixes is great cause the song changes every 3 minutes or so, which forces you to attention. The speed is high but in my case it matches my speed well. I tried listening to Dragonforce tonight, but the songs are too long, and the pace is too high and doesn't match my cycling speed. For cycling, Eurobeat == good, Dragonforce == bad.