now for the serious comment;
More on Portege R600 noise: I now think it is not the 320Gbyte disk that is so noisy but a little fan that runs continuously. Weird: if you lift the machine 2 inches above your desk you don’t hear it anymore. I tested all kinds of material to put under it but no help. Sounds as if the inside of the box becomes a resonator at reflection. I guess
all the Toshiba R600’s have this fan, also the solid-state-disk versions. Show stopper,
alas.

i did not copy this; no i did not.
i love u mate

I didn’t dare to go for the solid-state disk since I don’t know whether standard linux distributions have a driver for it. Also, the weight gain is not the disk drive but just the smaller battery Toshiba puts in when the DVD playr is absent. That itself is only 70 grams, the battery difference 200; I guess Toshiba thinks that with a DVD player its customers will play DVDs instead of work on flights and then complain about the battery.

So I ended up with the 320Gbyte disk. And am unhappy with this choice
because the disk is much too loud, making a continuous hissing noise
like a fan. Otherwise, the machine is great, Ubuntu 8.10 installed
smoothly, and with some recipes found with Google (such as xv
installation) it does all my Mac does, but with proper X11 behavior
such as cut-and-paste per mouse click.

The noise kills the show for me. I wonder whether a smaller disk would
help, and whether I can get and insert one. I hope somebody can tell me?