ffutures | Nrtbook thing again

Cunning plan no. 1 just failed - it doesn't boot from a Linux USB stick, and if there's a non-bios menu for selecting boot order I can't find it.

Looks like it's a 2.5" IDE drive inside. Before I splurge on a new one (which probably won't have an OS) does anyone local have a spare I can try, and the ability to put something like Ubuntu on it?

And within minutes I found the boot menu (it's F8 I think, I tried pressing the function keys wildly during bootup), and it's starting up Ubuntu from a memory stick.

Works but doesn't seem to be able to use the WIFI, presumably because it isn't installed properly. I think this gives me confidence to buy a drive. Shouldn't be too expensive, I hope.

later still Actually it appears to be a 1.8" IDE ZIF fitting drive. Not good news, they're obsolete and expensive, and ZIF makes the choice very limited.

however it looks like I can get a 1.8" CF card adapter for ~~a fiver~~ £1.38 (delivery from Hong Kong but usually that is OK) and say a 16gb CF card for about the same price as a 20gb hard drive. The advantage of this is that I have a 2gb CF card and can try this out before splurging on the card. Think I'll go that route, it ought to give a battery life boost for a slight speed cost. And there are so few compatible drives out there that this may be my best way to be sure of compatibility!