New Computer setup

Thought I would share my new desktop setup at the house.

I work out of my home, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. We have 4 active computers in the house, my personal computer, my work computer, and one each for Jeanette and Hannah. Added to the network is a VOIP phone through packet8
With working from the house the separation between a work and home computer wasn't that easy. I use a dual screen setup and if I wanted to do something off the work computer, I had to physically move to a corner of the desk, and be 'stuck' with one monitor.

My personal computer is a desktop with Ubuntu 8.10. It's setup with a raid drive which all the computers in the house back up to. We store our music there as well. I have been running this machine for a few months, testing and playing with it to make sure it was stable.

The new setup is pretty sweet for me. I reduced my desk footprint, and have a more efficient (for me) working environment.

Primary computer is the Ubuntu machine running dual screens. I am using the open source ATI driver for this. I loose compiz and other accelerated graphics, but that's not a big deal. I couldn't get the flgrx driver to run BigDesktop. Maybe the better way to put it is I gave up. =) I am still fighting some contrast/brightness issues with the VGA monitor in this setup. The VGA monitor is 'washed out' on the subtle colors. I am considering purchasing a NVidia card with dual DVI heads + TV at some point. The current x1200 ATI is an on board card.
I setup VirtualBox to run an install of XP Home which I had left over from Hannah's laptop. I converted her laptop to Ubuntu several months ago. I have to run a windows setup for work. VPN, Outlook, Intercall, etc are still windows only, or more appropriately they run smoother on windows. I know about evolution, and can run intercall in a wine setup, but the virtualbox setup was dead simple.
I still have a laptop from work which sees use when I travel. I couldn't completely scrap that one, so I have it running as well. I access that from the Ubuntu machine through rdesktop. I have a webcam for conference calls which I have not successfully integrated with Ubuntu yet. Really haven't tried that hard either.
With Gnomes window switcher I keep one of the desktops with a full screen of the XP Home, and the other with the rdesktop to the laptop along with a browser.
The great feature here is that I can run another desktop with my current projects files. It's a clean screen focused only on that task. One click and I am back to the email/windows environment.

To coordinate all the files, I use a few different methods.
The Virtualbox XP Home is 90% to run Outlook. I use google sync to sync my calendar to a gmail account setup for work related items. I can view that gmail calendar from anywhere.
My files are saved to the RAID drive on the Ubuntu machine through shared folders. This keeps the VirtualBox XP setup 'clean'. I could loose that setup completely and not loose any files at all.
The laptop uses synctoy to synchronize it's files with the RAID on the Ubuntu machine. Every night it grabs the updates made during the day. Of course it still has Outlook installed, so I try to run that every night to catch up on the IMAP updates. Even if I forget, it will catch up the next time I run it. My emails are remote. The laptop also has Google sync on it, but it syncs read only to Jeanettes calendar so she can see what times I have appointments. Helps if she is planning things.

So I am now protected from any one of three failure points. If the Ubuntu system completely and totally crashes I only loose that days files, and can switch to the laptop.
If Virtualbox XP crashes I can switch to the laptop, or the primary ubuntu machine (accessing email through the web). If the laptop crashes I have the Ubuntu machine.
The laptop can be taken off the dock and used at any time and have the most up to date files as long as I run synctoy just before it.

The best part for me is that I can shut down Virtualbox, and not feel guilty for doing my personal work. I am not on a company computer. I can test applications, work on personal projects, etc. without worrying about uninstalling or such. However, I am just one rdesktop command away from using the laptop to "get back to work".

There are still some todos to work out:
* VGA wash out. - This is an OCD issue for me now. I know it's possible to fix. I will either buy a new card, or learn whatever language is required to write a new driver.
* Archived emails are on the laptop. Single point of failure, but in the end not horrible. Archived emails are 12 months old.
* Clunky access to files in Virtualbox. Windows defaults to My Documents which is empty. Need to investigate how to remap that without having a domain controller.
* Speakers. Only an investment in new ones will fix this. I have ferritte cores on the wires, but cellphones, wireless routers, sun flares cause an incessant clicking.
* Volume control from keyboard. I didn't realize how much I used that in the windows environment. This is another driver thing possibly. Have not investigated.
* Webcam on Ubuntu. - All the required stuff is installed, but it's not recognized.
* Tinker with xorg and properitary driver to get compiz and potentially brightness/contrast controls while maintaining dual monitors/one screen. - I played with this for several hours already. I can get it working all the way until gnome loads (i.e. login splash and intermediate). I can get dual monitor/one screen but then gnome won't load and one monitor get the black "X" cursor..
* Setup 'ghost' from my primary drive on Ubuntu to the RAID so I can have a drive failure on the primary (or goober up the OS as I did with APM stuff) and get it back.
* Setup 'ghost' from the work laptop as well. I would like to system restore it back to day one, but then I loose one of my redundancy.
* Setup a USB drive backup of files so I could have a lightning strike kill all the computers and still work once I get a computer back. (This also serves my desire for a netbook for Christmas).