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RE: [LUG] Laptop recommendations
Dear All,
My laptop died today . . . funeral on Saturday, RIP faithful companion :-(
Motherboard's fsked, so now I need a replacement.
Specs required:
Low weight
Good battery life (>6hrs if poss)
Built in network card (preferably one with its own processing power)
Built in modem (not a WinModem)
Floppy drive
CD & DVD drive
Good graphics - capable of playing movies from hard disk or DVD
Under £1000
But, most importantly of all (and the reason I'm mentioning this on
list) . . . nice standard hardware which works sweetly with linux
distributions and is easily replaced if it goes wrong (tough as old
boots would be good too). I'm particularly keen to find one which
works well with debian as I could never get debian to install on my
VAIO (which reminds me, I don't want another Sony !).
Otherwise I'm open to suggestions - not too worried about Memory/Disk
space as I can always upgrade that and I assume that any current
laptop is going to have a CPU easily fast enough for my need, the last
one was 666MHz and that was fine (if a little worrying to my
superstitious side).
I'd be quite happy to by one with Linux pre-installed if I could get
it with a discount for the Microsoft tax.
Thanks,
Mark
-----------------------------------------
AVOID ATI CARDS!!! AVOID, AVOID, AVOID!!!
I have had experience with several IBM laptops, and have had very few
problems with them. Modems are always an issue, *all* laptops will have
software modems (aka: winmodems), but from the T20 onwards they are minipci
cards so you can change them. Many of the models come with lucent or ambit
(lucent compatible) modems anyway (though I ended up with a flipping 3com
thing- they are great for LAN cards, but when it comes to modems they
haven't even heard of linux). The new thinkpads can have bigger batteries,
and will run and run and run... (especially the X series). The problem with
the new ones though is that many of them have Ati graphics cards (AVOID):
see below.
IBM Thinkpad 600 - had it for ages, didn't try the mwave modem in linux, but
other than that it worked great (out of the box with mandrake).
IBM Thinkpad T20 - Using right now, had for ages, great machine (apart from
the the 3com modem).
IBM Thinkpad T23 - same as the T20, but faster, more ram, better graphics,
some have wifi built in (which is interesting- it's on the minipci card with
the modem (so getting replacements is virtually impossible)).
Tell me if you want more info on thinkpads.
My dad has a Compaq Presario 2100 - horrible. The lan didn't work properly
(and it's worked out of the box on EVERY other computer I have ever used
linux on) and it has an ATI graphics card.
ATI cards are nonstandard, buggy, poorly made, poorly programmed, pieces of
rubbish- and that's on windows! They do Linux drivers so they can say they
do, but they are binary-only, even more buggy and poorly programmed and
INCREDIBLY hard to get working. And it gets worse- that was for desktop
cards! The mobile versions are not even supported by ATI- laptop
manufacturers have to make and maintain their own drivers (and I found it
hard enough to get windows drivers), so of course you won't get any Linux
support.
AVOID ATI CARDS!!!!!!
Simon
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