Contingency Plan

I installed the latest version of the Fedora Project's Linux, Fedora 11, a Linux distribution long considered Red Hat's test bed for their enterprise version of Linux, but still a distribution which I feel is as good for general desktop use like popular contenders Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Mandriva (all good distros as well, especially as Mandriva was my first back in 2005) . Anyway, as soon as I logged in for the first time, I was greeted by the following screen.

Ahh! Now would be a really bad time for my computer to die since I can't afford a new one. Also, I have a special attachment to this IBM Thinkpad because it was the first computer I had which wasn't paid for by my parents (in a sense I can say I "worked for it" or earned it since it was an incentive in exchange for my agreement to be in a triple room in a space for two people my freshman year of college) and because I have had it for such a long time.

However, if it dies, it dies an honorable death, as it saw me through my first homework assignment as a freshman all the way to my last term paper as a senior and has survived at least one bad drop. Well done, good friend!

If the hard drive fails, I can always buy a replacement one for less than $100 until I can afford a new computer. I would hate to throw this computer away as someone else who has basic computer needs (nothing fancy, i.e. the basic OpenOffice, Firefox, and occasional music and video person) could really find good use for it.