Purchasing a new laptop is a hazardous undertaking: a cautionary tale

This morning I took delivery of an Acer 4005WLMib - 2GHz Turion AMD, 
15.4" wsxga, ATI radeon Mobile X700. And tried 5 times, yes, five, to 
install 2006 x86_64. All went well until the reboot, when all hell broke 
loose: /dev/fb0 does not exist! Wrong video mode. Anything there was in 
the error messages files was thrown at me. Turns out the video card 
could not be configured by XFdrake... I updated xorg, but to no avail. 
And then I saw a 2006 x86 disk through my tears. So in desperation I 
installed that. And guess what? The mist cleared and there was a shining 
graphics terminal before my eyes! The card was configured as ATI radeon 
fbdev. No problems!

But being a glutton for punishment, I went and updated xorg. Yes: fglrx 
incompatibility error.... Grrrrrr........ Still, better firing on 32 
bits then none at all.

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Yehudi Levine
Nijenheim 64-01
3704 BN Zeist
The Netherlands

Phone: +31 30 695 1729
Fax:   +31 84 713 0122