Re: hard drive load cycle problem
I'm not sure why this would cause you to abandon linux. There are known and easy ways to fix this problem and the disclaimer of "Do not do this unless you know what you are doing" is just that, a disclaimer. If you have verified that you are having Load_Cycle_Count issues, then try the fixes and see if they help. The fixes are fairly benign and won't cause your laptop to explode.
See this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=805570
Or, alternatively, this can also reduce disk activity in general: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=839998
Don't try to make something "fast" until you are able to quantify "slow".
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