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Which Laptop To Buy?
Misha writes: "In this day and age, it seems that the advertisement offers for desktop systems have slowed down in term of features. Everyone has agreed that AGP, DVD, >1GHz, etc. is what everyone will want. This does not seem to be the case with laptops. Every year, they manage to cram a bigger resolution screen, more system and graphical memory, more battery life into a less-than-two-inch thick plactic box. So, what are everyone's preferences as far as laptops go? What kind of features are most important? How does price enter the equation? Which one is best for the money? And especially, can you get a decent machine for under $1000?" I've been using the IBM Thinkpad T20 for the last year or so, and love the machine -- with the exception of the WinModem *sigh*. What else is everyone using?
Hey,
You wouldn't happen to know if there was a converter from the MediaBay-format (IDE+power connector) to a standard IDE one?
I've got a 42 gb 3.5" IDE disk, and I'd really like to use it in my laptop (the compaq armada m700).
Regards,
-- tic
Did I misunderstand? Would Apple have fixed things for free if that extended warranty thing hadn't been purchased?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Now that I've been out in the "real world" for a few years, I have slowly changed my opinion. I see how Jews operate in the real world, and I am aghast. The only problem is that Hitler lost the war. Since the winners get to write the history, our view of Hitler is distorted. The schools only teach the point of view of those who opposed Hitler. Where is the balance? How many times have you heard some Jew demand "balance" in some news story? Yet where are these demands for "balance" when it comes to telling the true history of the Third Reich? We only get to see one side of the story. Hollywood and the New York Times never show us the opposing perspective. Where is the balance?
The Jews are the Problem.
My Satellite Pro 4300 has just given way to an Apple iBook. Best laptop ever - better than the TiBook too because it's a) smaller, b) lighter c) cheaper and d) just as fast! It's the greatest laptop in the world - buy one soon!
I just LOVE vladinator's site! Especially the "fash" section, where I learned to cut the bottom off of an old shirt to use as a hair enhancement! Oh, and the "dance party" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read vladinator's emails! Here you will discover how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have a pizza party? A fash party? Go to the mall with all of your friends? Have a sleepover and call boys on the phone?
In short, if you haven't checked out vladinator's site, you don't know what you're missing!
the warranty is about the only thing thats better in the competition, and ive found a way to get it: buy the ibook on a good credit card. all decent credit cards double the original manufacturers warranty for free, up to a max of three years. so you get 2 years for free, and can add a third year for like $50
yes, i am suffering from ibook envy. a friend has one and after i first tried it, i keep trying to borrow it. the battery life and that cd-rw/dvd combo drive are /very/ nice
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
That goes for just about all of them (though IBM seemed to have lower prices for upgrades and even has a "free" extra 64 MB upgrade for systems purchased). I just bought a pair of 128 MB PC100 SODIMMS for my Armada for ~$80 at Crucial, and I hate to think that Compaq was charging for it. Just make sure to the the correct specs (the Armada 7400 familiy uses CAS Latency 2 memory instead of the more common CAS Latency 3).
Memory prices are ridiculously cheap right now.
good keyboard without win9x keys and not to pricey, that's what I'm looking for
I have a Sattelite 1700-500 (Cel700, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD,DVD, 56K softmodem, 13" TFT) with a CS4281 as a sound card. I have the same problem as you: I have to power off instead of rebooting between OSes or else, the sound won't work (won't work in Linux, WinMe won't even boot!).
The other things work fine, though. The softmodem is a Lucent one, with full support under Linux. Oh, and it heats like hell when used for a couple hours straight.
The best part is that I bought it new for under 1300 USD.
I picked up a Satellite about 4 months ago for around 1300. Mandrake slid on like butter. After first install, the only things that didn't work were sound and the winmodem. Hover, the latest ALSA and LTMODEM drivers cured that. Linux even identified my Drive as a DVD. Now, to get the software working....
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
I'm currently unhappy with Toshiba's Satellite Pro 4600 model. All around cool laptop, with built-in wi-fi even -- but serious video problems.
With the pre-installed Win 2000 load, it gets corrupt text in Internet Explorer when scrolling down on web pages, and strange horizontal lines.
Some software (expecially games) kick it into video modes where the whole screen is corrupt.
It's a Trident Cyberblade 3D chipset, so maybe Trident just sucks - but Toshiba has made no effort to post an improved video driver after almost a year now.
It seems like they "solved the problem" by simply not using that chipset again for any future model of notebook.
Well, it's kinda sad to say this, because Gericom makes nice notebooks, IMHO, and I have a Webboy. It sure _is_ a good notebook, but Gericom gives a shit on Linux users (I'm bugging them for half a year now). The problem is the display, which can only be used via VESA Framebuffer which is a inflexible and slow (!) solution. Gericom often uses the SiS900 chipset which has good Linux support by SiS directly, but the XFRee86 SiS900 driver has problems with TFT displays (at least in Gericom notebooks... it seems as noone ever got it running under Linux). The sound makes some strange noise very few minutes, with the mouse "jumping" around while it automagically presses some buttons. Very annoying, as this can accidentially close windows or do other things you don't like (it prevents long working periods). :-(
But if you want a cheap and fast Windows notebook I can recommend Gericom, with Linux it's a real pain
I totally agree that quietness is Really important. Comment #294 has some ideas on this as well.
The spicdriver for the sony viao jogdial was just merged into the test kernels I believe in 2.4.7pre9. I've been using it with 2.2.17 for about 6 months. Has pretty much the same fuctionality as the windows couterpart.
...also, what about palmtops?
ONE BUTTON MICE? we are talking laptops here, moron... i guess that fact escaped you.
Specs:
P3-850MHz, 128mb RAM plus one empty SODIMM (mine easily upgraded to 384mb), 20gb IDE drive, 16mb Geforce2Go AGP video, DVD/CD-RW combo drive (4x CD-R/CD-RW write, 24x read), integrated ethernet (Intel EtherExpressPro 10/100), two USB ports, one Firewire port (OHCI), parallel, external VGA, composite video, built-in subwoofer (excellent sound for a laptop!), can play audio CDs while computer off, headphone jack with volume control dial on side of computer.
--
OpenGL performance is pretty much as expected from an NVIDIA chipset. Not quite full Geforce2 performance, but beats the crap out of the SGI O2s that I often use. If you need to run your high-end 3D apps on a laptop, this will handle them. Haven't yet tried Quake3 or Unreal Tournament yet, but graphics demos and screensavers (i.e. GizmoZone screensaver) run very nicely.
As LCD display resolution is fixed, it's often the case that lower resolutions tend to look pretty crappy on LCD displays. There is an optional feature to use the Geforce2Go to rescale lower resolutions (or full-screen DOS console) to full screen. The scaling utilizes bilinear filtering so it smooths out the image and happens in real-time. A nice feature I'd love to see is to be able to scale down from higher resolutions. For instance, 1280x1024 would look really slick scaled down to 1024x768 LCD resolution.
One of the coolest features of the Geforce2go chipset is Twinview. This allows you to plug in an external display (either VGA or composite video) for dual monitor display. In Win2000, you can split your dual displays using a top/bottom or left/right orientation, or you can have one display show a zoomed up section of another. The chipsets capability of smoothly zooming on a section of the screen is pretty slick, and you have a lot of freedom to choose which display shows what.
Another EXTREMELY cool feature is the ability to automatically show 'overlay' video full size on an external display. For instance, start playing an AVI file with mplayer2 (or a DVD for that matter) in a window, and it will show full screen on your secondary monitor or TV output. Drag the mplayer2 window to the side of your primary display and the video still plays. This is definitely the laptop to buy for doing presentations.
One thing that really stands out is the sound. I didn't really buy this laptop with audio in mind but was gladly surprised to find that the Yamaha DS-754 chipset sounds almost as good as my $180 Yamaha SW60XG MIDI card. I've been running the (admittedly crappy) XG Enlightenment Central page for about four or five years. XG is easily the best sounding MIDI standard around, supporting very powerful on-board channelized DSP effects (32 channels of filter/reverb/chorus, solid-state/marshall/tube amp distortion, pitch change, WAH-WAH, EQ, many more!) Not to plug my site (I don't have any ads, so I don't make money off hits), but I have collected a few hundreds MIDI files on my site mostly done by in-house Yamaha composers. The DS-754's DSP is supposedly software-programmable, which has some some hack value if the SDK ever is released.
On the bad side, I don't care much for the little eraserhead-type mouse thingy. I've gotten a little bit more used to it, but I still would have preferred a touchpad. The DVD/CD-RW combo drive sometimes take about 30 seconds to recognize some CD-R discs. The display is 1024x768, which is fine for some people but I would have easily paid a few hundred more for higher resolution. You can now buy a DELL with Geforce2Go (both 16mb and 32mb) with a higher display resolution, and pretty much all the specs of the Toshiba, but it probably ends up costing quite a bit more. I paid $2500, but the price has dropped to about $2000-$2200 for a similar model with a P3-900.
BTW, I have yet to install Linux on this thing but I've heard it runs quite well except for the Toshiba (Lucent?) AMR WinModem.
STratoHAKster
yet another idiot/liar! the G4 titanium PowerBook is CHEAPER than your StinkPad, you moron, by $500...
Word, I have the exact same config. My sound crapped out 2 days after I got it. When I tried to install the drivers for the ESS maestro 3i (correct name?), all I got when I rebooted were squeals and crunching noises. Needless to say I am sending it back to get repaired.
OT: Have you messed with the splasha0 program yet? You can make your own 640X480X16 bitmap and write it to the NVRAM as the post screen. Right now I have a pretty hilarious picture of the bottom of my unit describing with a highlighted area where the wierd noises were coming from. Hopefully the repair facility dosent take offense to it. haha.
This is partially true. Some, like mine, have a 3COM mini-PCI combo NIC and modem - it's a winmodem as far as I've been able to tell. There doesn't seem to be a driver either. I wish I had the Lucent, but I just don't end up dialing up most places when I travel.
Other than that, Thinkpads are great. If you can deal with the eraser head mouse, than all is good.
Laptop support was officially dropped with solaris 8 maybe a little before sometime in solaris 7. The only real list that is kept isl
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/x86-laptops.htm
this is the info that I have been going on. The new Dells have the miniPCI card slot in them, and they are offering a 3com ethernet miniPCI card on their laptops, so that may be an option.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
Does this mean that the freebsd sound has better-than-linux support for the Yamaha sound chip as well?
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
I'm all for user preference and all that, but that 'swizzle stick' has a big advantage. Very fine control. When used properly, you can even edit pictures using the Gimp with ease. Yes, it takes some getting used to. But think about it this way: a touch pad tries to map the screen to a small surface (the pad), using a large pointer (your finger).
Don't want to start a flame war. I admit the things can take some getting used to, and touchpads are more intuitive. But once you've mastered the nipple, you'll never go back.
I mod you down because Macs only have one button mice. Now POOF. Go away.
I've been running a Gateway Solo 2500 PII366 for about 2 years. 0 complains. + installing and cofiguring linux on it was breeze.
Your post, while interesting, was so obvious.
Moderators on crack, indeed.
1000 SlashDot sigs
The compatibility among products is quite high; most any will probably work. I'd check with the school first, see if they have a list of compatible cards. Otherwise, the Linksys and D-link products are cheap and functional. I currently have a Thinkpad 240X with a Aircomnet card for use at work; works great.
?Tote> I'll still say I find that hard to belive. That says that spinning the DVD is hardly drawing any power at all, when it is probably the biggest power hog in the system. I'll have to try it myself. I'm flying from Chicago to Boston Sunday, so I'll have a chance to give it a whack. Are you running on OS X when you're testing? Its power management support is somewhat broken at the moment, so you can expect a reduced battery life there no matter what you're doing.
-dair
WTF are you talking about? Is there a reason you can't use both PC-Card slots at the same time? Besides that, the latest generation (i.e. the i8000) of Dells have an optional Mini-PCI ethernet card, which leaves both of the PC-Card slots open. It baffles me that iBook users think they're the only people who can use wavelan cards, apparantly because Apple makes those cool AirPort access points that spontaneously burst into flames.
I'll tell you what's unfortunate, it's that shitty single button mouse on the otherwise cool iBook.
-dc
I Already have a 12.ghz Athlon, a Dual450g4, and well... just just bought a 400mhz TiBook yesterday.
:).
It is honestly the coolest looking computer that I have ever used. However I did just see an ad for a compaq rip-off that looks almost identical aside from that big dumb oval logo.
My TiBook is running quite quick for 400mhz. OS X's animations glide on it, the slot load DVD drive is SLICK, it every port (s video, vga, IR, usb, firewire, 100bt, modem, yada yada) you need (aside from audio-in...been replaced for USB audio). I was just running iTunes visuals on my TV last night at a party (damn nuevo hippie kids)... it was cool stuff
The screan is nice, however it SUCKS in the light. My old powerbook was much easier to read in bright light. Moreover the monitor tends to distort when you move it a fair amount. It's paper thin and the liquid really becomes affected. Ohh, and I got a dead pixle on my second 2 with the book...errr. But I like it too much to part with it for an anal repair.
I've been very protective of this little guy. It is the kind of notebook that people look at and want to jack from you...which is cool.
Ohh, and for the $2500 400mhz g4 w/ DVD, Apple tossed in a free battery powered USB CDRW so I can burn CDs in my power-less unibomber shack.
My clock keeps going back to 1969...anyone know how to get to that old-folks-hearing-aid-computer-clock battery in the TiBook? Man.. I have NEVER purchased anything over 500 bucks that has worked right. Hehe.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
The Titanium Powerbook also has: S video (or standard composite out) that can either be mirrored or seperate from the main display, a non win modem (duh) and the capability to have 1 GB of ram (via 2 512 MB sodimms) And it runs Linux great.
Add my voice to the choir. I got an icebook about 2 months ago and it's hands down the best all-round laptop I've used. I do NOT miss the POS Toshiba Satellite it replaced (slow, heavy and ridiculously short battery life). We will be replacing the other HP desktop in my office with an icebook in the near future. The Tibook is nice (lovely actually) but pretty expensive relative to the icebook and it seemed a little fragile for my taste - but then I travel a fair bit and absolutely don't want to lug a dead laptop around. cheers, Mark
I ran across the Fujitsu S-Series in Thailand. Don't seem to see it around here very much. Starting at $2100 it's not cheap but, no one else I know of has managed to get a cd-rom, let alone a CD-RW/DVD combo, crammed into 4.5 lbs.
Disclaimer: I don't own one yet.
That could be because the clock speeds are not equivalent?
Power PCs do some things better than intels and intels do some things better than power pc. Either one will run your compiler or word processor just fine.
I've finally found the off by one erro
I've changed screen, harddisk and motherboard, the keyboard is probably the only original part left : )
For features; screen choices is most important. Apart from that - less is more. You will probably not miss cdrom or diskdrive if you go on the road without them.
That should say 1.2ghz..not 12ghz....that's be something eh?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
That should be 0.99984437405678246306955025055121, you ought to be using radians, not degrees.
I picked up a new 400MHz Pismo (Apple PowerBook) back in November in anticipation of OSX. It is my first Apple machine, and it definately won't be my last. It takes abuse daily but it still looks and runs like it's brand-new, and people regularly remark how beautiful the display is.
;)
The only thing that stinks is that sometimes compatibility issues present themselves at the worst times. I can't just create a *BSD boot floppy any 'ol time when I'm out and about... that sort of thing (okay so I could buy an external floppy drive, but you get the point). But OSX is fantastic, and being able to drop into a shell with Photoshop running at the same time is hard to beat. Can't wait till 10.1 arrives!
In retrospect, I would have gone without the AppleCare warranty, but as an educator I got it for almost nothing anyways. And, as it probably goes without saying I would have waited for the G4 (at the time I had heard the G4 was going to look like the old iBooks! yikes!). Oh well. Ohh yeah, and I would have picked up an extra battery while it was still cheap. They are twice as expensive now as they were when I bought it.
My last piece of advice... pay cash. Don't go into debt over it; a new model will come out and you'll still be paying for the old one. There's nothing quite like paying every month for old computer hardware. Okay, another piece of advice... look around at resale values on laptops (on ebay etc). Generally, the lower the resale value on a given model, the more problems that brand tends to have. And besides, someday you will want to sell the one you have and get a newer one, it may as well be worth something. Also look around for refurbs... if there is a whole slew of one particular brand or model available as refurbs, that should clue you into something.
As for PC's, my best luck has been with Dell. Sony has quality control problems, particularly with their displays on their laptops. This is a shame, because they really make a nice looking product with spiffy features. Compaq laptops tend to lose motherboards, but otherwise are decent. Toshiba makes nice ones, but the shell and buttons (on/off etc) tend to have a short life for some reason. HP makes nothing but crap, don't be lured by the cheap price. I can't think of any other brand to say anything good about.
Just my two cents, hope you find them valuable. I've been up for 26 hours, what the heck am I doing here heh
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
That's easy, Jakes in Coates, MN, right outside of the Twin Cities. As to which one you should buy, that's probably a preference thing, and you can certainly get them for under $1000.
Dell might have stopped supporting Linux, but the community sure hasn't. I have been running Woody on mine since day one. Although I needed that other OS for my job, they co-exisist quietly.
The pointer is important (to me), I like the 'eraser' type that IBM has, and some others, like Dell who have dual. I hate those touch pad things(personal preference).
Hell yeah. Down with the touchpad! Up with the Trackpoint! And I thought that I was the only one. Funny thing is, most laptop makers are slowly drifting towards the touchpad (at least in the consumer models). I'm sure IBM won't because it pioneered the Trackpoint, but it's irritating to see it going away everywhere else.
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
Audis are just more expensive versions of the VWs.
why u say Tibook?
gismo
You'll never manage it... Laptops are always beghind desktops in terms of raw capacity. By the time ther are laptops with that sort of power, your desktops will be so much further forward you won't want it any more.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
The largest computer magazine in the Netherlands tested it. The battery life was 59 minutes! That means you can hardly use it without access to a electricity socket.
That's truly awful. They wondered if that machine was broken. What are your experiences? Is it really this bad?
In comparison both Apple laptops have got real-life 3-4 hours of battery time (5 hours without doing anything).
PS. Personally I think the built-in 802.11 slot (Airport/Wi-FI) in Apple laptops is a killer. It saves you from using a rare PCMCIA-slot and features built-in attenna's.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
I have a USB to 10/100 LAN converter that does not give me trouble with other pcmcia cards.
A professor of mine in High School had a simple briefcase style "desk/lap-top" that he used. It looked more like a mini-tower with a fold away LCD panel. This is akin to what I'm looking to do for my next system. Looking at how I would use the system, I realized that there would be VERY FEW times in which I would need to actually use batteries (as I would be able to suck power in a classroom, lab, dorm room, apartment, most restaurants and/or at work).
Currently, I'm just waiting on being able to afford the components I want:
* Apple Cinema Display
* Athlon/Duron based board and system
(though with the past problems with pwr supply problems, I wonder if I should go with Intel)
* 802.11b
* 512Mb >= RAM
* Optical Mouse (any surface, including the top of your head if necessary)
* ATI Radeon vid card
* SB Live! snd crd
* mini-keyboard
* 30gb >= Hrd Drv
At the risk of being stoned (pls, no pun intended), I WISH I could run on a TiBook, but just can't quite pry myself away from win*. Too many other users that I have to support (flippen family!) to stray too far from the heard. Doh!
Andrew 'Mickey Knox' Gearhart
gotta go with the vaio.... FX series allows you to slide out that useless floppy :) and stick in another battery... all around a sweet lappy
Tweak like your pocketbook depended on it!
Your laptop will go wrong.
Ask carefully about the warranty, and see if you can get it extended.
You have to use this.
Trackpad or stick or external mouse? Screens much larger than 14" are a pain in a 'plane or train seat. Battery life needs to be comparable to max journey time.
Are you planning to run Linux? NetBSD?
Check the hardware compatibility list. Look for other people using the same model. Don't believe the manufacturer when they say, SoundBlaster Compatible (one popular type needs a Windows driver to download microcode for example)
Currently I'm using an Acer Travelmate 602TER. There were some problems with the CD drive, and I had to send it back under warranty. The warranty means they pick up the laptop, and return it two days later, at their expense, fixed. I have yet to see anything as good elsewhere, although it's always possible if you pay more, I expect.
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
yes. os xs bsd gives me everything i like about linux. and os xs graphics and gui take it so much further
i tried linuxppc, i hear that yellow dog now has better support. still, os x is in another league. all im waiting for is the gui speed boost of 10.1 and office
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Agreed! I really disliked both the Tecra 8000 and 8100 that I used. It seems like Toshiba charged a huge premium price on these models, just because they thought businesses would pay it for the ability to interchange docking stations and other such accessories among multiple models in the Tecra product line. You didn't really get a better computer for the extra money. The Satellite Pro high-end models had the same or better specs, and a less flimsy case/keyboard, for almost half the price!
I run Debian Stable on a Toshiba Libretto 100CT. It's three years old, and I still use it because I don't think anyone's yet produced anything as good. It weight 2 pounds 4 ounces, is the size of a paperback book, and will happily run a full Oracle + Apache + Tomcat servlet setup. Downside is short battery life - about 90b minutes.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
try laptopsauction.com. it costs more than ebay, but you can get a warranty on it.
I installed Debian. Does Yellow Dog have sound support?
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
Hmm.. I found a much easier way. Just create a batch file called ls.bat with 'dir' in it and put it in your system dir.
--Josh
In the words of Homer Simpson... "Mmmmm... beer."
(I could not believe when I realized that VAIOs don't all have ethernet built-in: that's why you need PC-CARD I guess)
And I the IR port is great. Too bad iBook does not have it anymore. Essential for on-the-road connections through my GSM phone. Oh, I forgot you guys live in the cellphone-mess-land that is the northamerican continent.
Of course the powerbook's main advantage is the SW:
can't wait for a dual-G4 TiBook this fall.
It's interesting to note that Russian company Belyi Veter (White Wind) sells laptops with Linux pre-installed just for $995.
Configuration is good enough:
For those who can read Russian, more info is available here . It would be interesting to hear impressions of those who already have such device, because I'm thinking about buying one. :-)
I have an Inspiron 8000 (900mhz, GeForce2Go, 256megs ram, etc). It fills my needs very well. What I _need_, or rather find a major time saver, is to have one computer that I can use at work, at home, at my beach house. True portability here takes a secondary role to functionality. I need a machine with enough power to get all my tasks done (including, preferrably, the occassional 3d shooter). Furthermore, when I cannot get to an honest to god keyboard, having a near-full size built in keyboard helps a lot. I can type with most of those ultra-lights, but not nearly as well or as comfortably. [Not to mention the fact that most of them can't support 1600x1200 (or near) resolution, that I work well in]
Although I would not want to lug around this if I were on the road as a salesperson, the weight difference is pretty irrelevant to me for the occassional trip. In short, neither a desktop system or an ultra-portable can do as good of a job as what I have now.
On the other hand, Toshiba is the only laptop vendor I know of that supports Unix and Linux friendly keyboard layouts: Every Toshiba I've ever had came with an extra set of molded keytops that allows you to swap the control and caps lock keys, so you can put the control key next to the "A" where it ought to be. Then just flip a BIOS parameter and you've got the only real Unix laptop keyboard out there...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
You don't have to be so defensive.
The combination of an attractive GUI and the ability to run mainstream software with the internals of Unix have me convinced that the Mac's the only way to go nowadays.
As others have said, it's really not at all expensive compared to other laptops. Although he doesn't address the Titanium PowerBook, which I'm about to buy, I thought this was pretty interesting as a comparison between the Apple iBook and its rivals.
D
The antennas are the 2 short stripes on the sides of the case.
When purchasing a laptop, you want the best features, but you want the best bargain in the process. I think the iBook meets this.
Combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 1024x1260, RGB, 20 Gig, 128MB RAM, OS X, 500MHz G3, wireless AirPort.
All these for a price I can't match in the PC world, that's why I'm happy with mine. Imagine yourself on a hammock in your backyard with a laptop and an internet connection, running *nix apps. Ahhhhhhhh.
If you need a PC card slot and a faster processor, and monitor spanning, get a TiBook.
A few friends of mine were apple users, and trying really hard to make Linux work. As soon as OS X came out they basically ditched Linux. This happen to anybody else?
I've finally found the off by one erro
Had to say that. Actually, I had eperience with three of them, all needing a ned HD at some point. I have replaced them all, one at a time, with Vaio models from Sony, and all are excellent. Firewire is there, along with dvd or dvd-cdrw drives, plenty of memory, and a touchpad that actually works well. The pricing is not bottom-line, of course, but it is not as high as you would expect from Sony, either.
Sorry dude. That's one of the things on my wish list. I haven't tried loading any notebooks up yet but it looks like Sun's notebook support is dismal.
I know it's hard to beat a Mac notebook, but our org. doesn't use Macs. Personally, if I had the bones and a need for a laptop (other than just geek-factor) I'd be all over one.
Mmmmm....titanium-cased G4.... /homer
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
You use the kernel feature that lets you map keys on the keyboard as buttons 2 and 3. I have an iBook sitting next to me running Linux, and the F11 and F12 keys are mapped as the middle and right buttons (respectively). It works out fine.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I would love to by a TiBook. They look great,and I prefer to run Photoshop and my other graphics applications on Mac. Only one problem: all my software is for PC. I can't justify spening $4K on a loaded notebook plus another couple grand for all my Adobe software. And my company sure as hell won't do it. I wonder how much of a barrier this is to others switching to the Mac platform?
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
so, the only way to get people to understand that Apple stands behind their products is to have them buy one and see for themselves? YES.
Or, you could splurge for TWO 5.25 floppies and get the coveted DX-1000. Bautiful 5" color CRT, too.
I bought a new Inspiron 4000 early this year. Fairly low spec, because that's all I need: 10GB disk, DVD, Celeron 600, 64MB RAM, 14.1" TFT display. No modem, because I already had a 3COM PCMCIA modem.
Battery life is at least three hours; with light use I've had four.
Currently runs WinME, (shipped with it) and SuSE 7.1, which was very easy to install. I had to configure the display as a generic TFT and put in the approriate refresh rates, but that was easy.
Main reasons for choosing it were size, support, (not that I've needed it), presence of a joy-button as well as touch pad and the fact that it's easy to install Linux, (I did some research on that first).
No big complaints so far. It's survived being dropped, (just a couple of feet onto carpet) and having noodles dumped over it. My only minor issue is that the speakers aren't very good; sound quality is OK but they're rather quiet, so not good for playing music whilst I work. Fortunately the machine itself is very quiet, even when the cooling fans are running.
Three main differences that I know. 1. OS - Inspirons come with WinMe, Latitudes come with Win2K. 2. BIOS - I'll rant about this in a second. 3. Service - Dell only seems to care about Latitude owners, because they are generally a business not an individual. All problems I have had their solution has been "Put WinME back on". I have an Inspiron 8000. The BIOS is designed for computer illiterates. You can set the clock, turn energy saving stuff on and off, and a couple other weenie things. I know someone who has a latitude (not sure what model), and he was able to download a so called advanced BIOS ROM for his and he can force IRQs for things and all sorts of options you might want. Not available for Inspirons. My laptop has been a total pain in the ass. *All* the devices are on the same IRQ. Before I installed Win2K (for school purposes) to make it a dual boot system all devices save one were on the same IRQ. I cannot make the 3d acceleration work in X because of this. Windows somehow can work with it, but Linux gets very cranky when the video card doesn't get an exclusive IRQ. Maybe things will improve when I reinstall Linux with a newer distro.
I just bought an IBM a21e, for $999. I installed Mandrake 8.0 without any problems although I had to buy a USB mouse since Linux doesn't support the touchpoint mouse. I did, however, manage to find drivers easily and install them for the WinModem on the laptop (www.linmodems.org). All in all a great machine for the money, and I'm the only one in the office that has EVER gotten X to run on a laptop :)
Where do you work, CrapUSA, err CompUSA?
I've got a PowerBook G3/333 which I'm actually using right now. I got in in September of 99 and it's been chugging along quite fine since then. I've put OS10 on it and it runs great and with almost half of the BSD ports collection working on Darwin I have lots of tools to work with. I really love the PowerBook line because you get a good deal of horsepower and plenty of time working off the battery. You can find the G3 PBs for 1300$ and under at powermax.com used.
In my experience OS10 works great on my PB including REALLY fast wakeup times from sleep mode. However if MacOS isn't exactly your thing theres lots of fairly well supported options to choose from. You can use just the Darwin core to which 2000 BSD Ports work (for the most part) on or another variant of BSD. For the hardcore Linuxytes there's always YDL or LinuxPPC. YDL I know is supposed to work really well on these and before OS10 came out I was really close to sticking it on here. Some people bitch and moan about a lack of legacy connection ports on the G3 PBs but I don't miss anything really and if you NEED certain connections there's always USB connected port replicators for serial and ADB ports. I get good battery life and good performance so I'll put in my suggestion for a Mac laptop which includes new or older iBooks which have the same features as PBs but with a smaller screen.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I've got one of these as well, it works beautifully with linux. For DVDs, try mplayer, and use the frame buffer device. Occasionally get a little weirdness from them still, and you have to manually start the next file, but overall works very nicely... highly recommend the 210..
My big gripe about them has to be the after sales support. We have one 5000 in the office that has had 4 HDD so far. And the 4th is dead already (been used for 1 week). Dells respons is to contimually replace the HDD curing the system in the short term, but not the problem. However, when they take a system away they do return it within 3 days. Just wish they could fix it.....
I've had my PowerBook G4 for some time now (OS X, of course) and I have noticed a few issues related to using it on an airplane. 1) The screen is absolutely amazing. I don't bother plugging in a monitor at my desk since this screen is so good. This leads to a small concern over privacy on planes. When watching a DVD (in OS 9, alas) the picture FILLS the width of the screen - roughly 12" wide. This means that the sharp screen and large image is very easily viewed by people in rows behind you (assuming you sit on the aisle like I do). I once caught someone watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from the seat diagonally behind me. Probably a not a good place or time to watch a movie with a lot of nudity :)
2) The wide aspect screen is quite nice in OS X since you can put the dock on the side. The additional benefit is that the screen, when opened, is SHORTER than other large screen laptops. So, if you are crammed into coach you can still open the screen to a respectable angle. At my desk I put the laptop on a crudely constructed platform and use an external keyboard and mouse.
Oh yeah, the stereo and S-Video out (also comes with a bundled S-Video -> RCA converter) lets anyone plug their PowerBook G4 into a large TV and play DVDs. Way cool...
I picked up a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 for about $2400. When I purachased my laptop, it was the only laptop available with a nVidia Geforce2 Go graphics chipset. The machine is a Pentium 3 850MHz with 256 MB RAM (I added 128MB for $60 after perusing pricewatch.com), a 20GB hard drive, built in 10/100 ethernet card and modem, firewire, CD Burner/DVD Player, 15" display, etc. Now you can buy the 1GHz version for $2400 or the 900MHz version for $2000 (much better value). A Geforce2 Go is a must if you use any OpenGL CAD type software or play games. The lack of any decent 3D accelerators had kept me away from laptops until I bought this one.
I don't see the word "Linux" anywhere in the article. Still, a large percentage of comments in this thread rate the machines on how well they run Linux. It seems a lot of people don't realize that it might not be an issue for this user.
BTW & more on topic: I've used several different laptops, and the Thinkpads have always been a pleasure to use (regardless of how people might feel about Big Blue).
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I'm with you on this. I borrowed one, wiped out the HD, reinstalled OS X + Debian in a 5G/5G partitioning scheme and it rocks, except I've no sound support in the "Debian Mode"... This has got to be the best laptop ever made.
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
I picked up Virtual PC for $77 and installed Windows 2000 on top of it. Then I installed about 30 of my Windows apps -- no compatibility problems seen so far. If you regularly work with huge Photoshop images, you'll probably want to stick with your Windows machine, because the emulation causes some performance penalty. But when working with small images you won't notice it.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Zip zero,
stingy with deniro....
My current laptop is a Compaq 18XL380, mainly because when I bought it, it had the best price for the features I wanted (15 inch screen, HD >= 20 GB, RAM >= 128 MB)
(Ironically?) when I bought this computer, it was much easier to install Red Hat 7 (worked immediately) than Windows 2000 ("Oh, no, we don't support that. You should immediately reinstall Windows Millenium since that is what we shipped with the computer.") I have since gotten both working, though, naturally without any support from Compaq.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
you are a despicable liar and FUDster, now, crawl back under your damn rock and STAY THERE. thanks.
Yeah, I didn't see those T23s w/ the built-in 802.11b until after I had put up my original post. If I had, I would have recommended it instead. Wireless internet is one of the best reasons to have a laptop.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
I LOVE my Compaq1800T. It's great. Good integrated ethernet, BEAUTIFUL screen, strong speakers, etc.
The only problem is the windows side. (I know we're not supposed to care about this, but I still play games on the go.)
Compaq doesn't give you a Windows disc. They basically give you a CD with a Ghost image on it, so you can wipe your harddrive and make it factory-fresh if you need to re-install, but that's not exactly Linux-friendly.
Otherwise, I LOVE my laptop.
- 900 MHz
- 15 inch TFT
- Ethernet + Modem built-in
- nVIDIA GeForce2Go (16 MB
...so you can't have everything... yet)
- 20 gig HDD
- DVD
- 1394/i.Link/Firewire
- $1999, or $1899 after rebate.
If I could get this and an iBook/PBG4, I'd be set for life. Or the next 6 months, whichever comes first.rooooar
The best thing to come out of that package Commodore was selling was the monitor. That monitor served long past the usefulness of the computer itself. It had a nice, twelve year run serving me first as a monitor, then a video game screen, pseudo TV through the VCR, and eventually service as a security monitor in my pop's store before the thing finally burned down. I almost cried tears the day I came home from college, saw a brand new - proper - security monitor where the monitor had been and my old man told me it had just started to smoke one day.
My first laptop was an NEC Versa with the touchscreen (I know I'm dating myself). I obtained it refurbished, and NEC replaced the scrren for free two years out of waranty. Contrast that with more recent horror experiences with Micron, and it shows that the most important parts of a laptop are an extended waranty and customer service.
Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300
Runs Great, only thing I haven't gotten working are buttons 3 and 4 on the trackpoint. If anyone has found how to make those useful e-mail me.
Oh yeah sometimes when I leave it on overnight it refused to wake up in the morning, and I don't know why. If anybody has insight into what's causing that, it would be cool to know.
But it's a great laptop to run linux on. You just have to spend some time getting it all working. had to install ALSA for sound, Lucent Drivers for the modem. etc.
I have a KDS Valiant and have the same problem running X. So far I have tried mandrake 8.0 and redhat 7.1 with no luck.
One company that might be worth a look is DNUK. They sell laptops with Linux preinstalled. I bought one a week ago and so far I'm impressed. All the hardware works with Linux (apart from the TV-Out and the Winmodem, but there is a PCMCIA modem available) and it all works out the box, except it hangs on reboot, but halt works fine. So far the support staff have been very helpful. The only disadvantage is that my one is quite heavy (being 15" screen and inbuilt everything) but the 14" models are significantly lighter. Have a look at DNUK Laptops for more information.
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
Agreed! I have an old 660CDT that has survived two kids and lots of travel. It currently has win98SE (bleah) and RH 7.1. Only gripe-can't boot from internal CD-needs a floppy to boot. Enjoy! Mike
Why would you do this when you have OS X?
and whoever posted the comment to which i am responding is obviously a semi-literate troglodyte that has the greatest difficulty discerning his anal orifice from a hole in the ground... have a nice goddamn day.
Might not be such a great idea. Notebook / laptop PC sound cards tend to put out a lot of back ground sound into the audio line (cd / hdd interference etc). Probably be a good idea to try the notebook you wanted with a hifi fefore forking over for it....
Got a Combo system in late May-totally sweet laptop! (1st new laptop I've owned). With 384 MB of RAM-speed isn't an issue, at least in 9.1. Now as for OS X, waiting to see how 10.1 does with G3 systems. If not, I can always run Yellow Dog Linux. Major gripe-removal of the hard drive requires the sacrifice of a virgin. Unfortunately, virgins are rather scarce in these parts! Enjoy, Mike
horse pucky! i know plenty of peeps who have the Old As Hell Wallstreet model and have zero issues with it, ditto the original iMac... so you are full of shit... Furthermore, i have many Macs ranging in age from 17 years old to one year old (including an original model iBook and a Lombard PowerBook) and they are all working fine and never required any maintenance! So, i'd say you are a LIAR.
Takes a licking and keeps on ticking:
Timex uses that phrase for its watches, but the one computer I remember ( The Timex Sinclair) was no where near durable enough to use that phrase on it. But today that are portable pc's that can withstand a lot of abuse. Back in March an article "Rugged Requirements"was written about an Air Force testing of three rugged laptops and a gateway in a Samsonite Case. These were tested for Heat, Drops, usability and other stress testing. In the heat test the Gateway actually fared better than two of the rugged models, although it was beaten by the Itronix XC6250 Pro. And to add to their usability ratings they are now offering THE added functionality to compute in low-light environments by illuminating their keyboard according to a recent review. When the author compares the IBM Thinkpad to the Itronix XC6250 Pro, the author states " A clever idea, but it doesn't come close to Itronix' solution." Even Robert Blincoe of the register mentioned in his article comments concerning the IBM Thinkpad stating " the added glare to the LCD screen making it a little harder to read, and the keys are not lit evenly."
I can not wait to get one of these!!!
rootless X on top of the aqua gui gives the best of both worlds. shells with a crippled mouse are annoying ...
extra features? not. TiPowerBook has the best feature set at the pricepoint it is going for , PERIOD. AND IT PLAYS DVD's dammit
this is bad advice you can get linux free or very checply on cd if you have to go and buy an MS OS you have just added up to $200.00 or more to your laptop while many of us like to use linux, very few can totally ditch microsoft products.
I am very jealous of the T20/T21/T22 laptops my co-workers have and my older 600e is finally due for replacement. But I am watching for a T23 with built-in wireless at a good price point.
We use Orinoco cards in the 600e models now and it would be great to not have that sticking out of the case and also have a better antenna arrangement.
We tested an iSeries ThinkPad with the built-in wireless and the reception was excellent even in poorly covered areas of our network and outdoors so I'm optimistic about the new T Series models with the same feature.
-G
Praise "Bob"
I don't remember the prefix, but it I believe the suffix on the model is 2805; PIII 750, 128M, 20G, Rage3, Xircom Winmodem, Xircom 10/100 base-t...ROCKS in Linux. ltmodem hooked right up with the modem, OSS ymfpci for sound (couldn't get alsa to work), kudzu found the network card right away, the default XF86 from the latest Mandrake dist wasn't so hot, but the latest XF86 RPM's work awesome.
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
We recently bought a new iBook and have been pretty pleased with it. Currently only running MacOS 9.1, but I plan to put OS X and maybe SUSE PPC edition on it too.
Admittedly, we've mainly been using it as a portable DVD player, but the plan is that the little woman will use it for her Web Design business too.
From purchase to delivery, I've been pretty happy with Apple Australia. Better than a lot of the PC companies I've dealt with, that's for sure...
David de Groot Snr Systems Engineer
And if you don't abuse an Apple laptop, they last even longer. My kid's pediatrics office is still using Duos and 1xx series Powerbooks.
Just my 2 cents worth of experience with notebooks: We're the internet development department of a marketing company in Vienna, Austria. Our "creative" folks of course use apples, while the techies (and one "enlightened" projektmanager ;-) )use Dell Latitude notebooks and we're quite happy with the notebooks as such and the support from Dell we get. My fellow techie and I recently installed Linux as altenative OS (SuSE 7.1) and it works just fine. All important hardware was properly recognized (even sound was no problem at all) and they run and work smooth and fine.
http://www.marmotte.net/linux/laptop/asus/
. ht ml
http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~gerald/laptop/asus
It's not a matter of which distribution you use.
b.
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
I too have one of sauls finest, Latitude C600. Very nice machine. The winmodem is the big drawback for the GNU dabbler.
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey . . .
ok, so I took some of the commonly occuring model names (not manufacturers) in this thread and plugged them into compare-stuff. follow this link to get the results from compare-stuff with a random choice of search engine (try the others to see what difference it makes) - of course it depends what words you choose but it seems to be in favour of the inspiron.
Um did you miss the Dell 8100 avalible with a GeForce2 with 32 megs 1600x1200 screen and 512megs of primary ram this seems to be the best bet for a #D Laptop right now.
The Travelmate's battery lasts two hours; the iBook's lasts five. The Travelmate is 6.1 pounds, the iBook is 4.9. Next?
The HP laptops are made by the same people who make the Dell ones. The new models even have some of the same numbers! The colour is slightly different, but that's about it. The insides are identical.
-- Steve
be warned: update the bios on your new 8000 when you get it, and also be aware the fan can be loud. screens are fucking NICE though.
My Dell Latitude C800 is the first Laptop that I've ever owned that really feels like a true desktop replacement. I just love it. 1400x1050,32Mb ATI, 20Gb HD, 384Mb RAM, inernal Modem/Network card, yeah it rocks!
a Compaq LTE 386/s20. It is a kick butt machine. 20MHz 386SX proc, 6MB mem, 60MB hd, and a 6inch black and white display (but if you plug in a monitor, it is color). It still runs beautifully. I gave it to my roomate to type papers on. It works great for that. It is DOS6.22 WFW3.11 running Word 6.0 and is very stable. These Compaq people might be hanging around for a while.
Speaking from experience as someone who's often left to pick up the pieces because a misguided friend purchased from a windows-only shop, I don't think it's bad advice at all. I think you'll find that the aslab link I point to is fairly competitive after adding in the cost for Windows.
If you want to save $2- and spend hours on end of extra time, then that's fine. If you're timer is worth anything, you don't want to do this.
you can get linux free or very checply on cd
Yes, but how long does it take to set up when you're not sure that your hardware is 100% ? Laptops have much more proprietary hardware than desktops. If you waste 8 hours or so of your time setting it up, how much is that worth to you ?
if you have to go and buy an MS OS you have just added up to $200.00 or more to your laptop
Windows 9x OEM is no more than $100-. NT 4.0 comes free with the $100- student edition visual C++ (if you're a student).
I'm finding a significant number of posts praising the various Apple laptops that note the ease of running LinuxPPC, DebianPPC, and other such distributions. I'm interested, but what have all of you Apple Laptop Linux people done about buttons? It's easy enough to just use a different mouse with a desktop, but I'd hate using a bunch of modifier keys with a trackpad. Has anyone managed to actually hack an Apple notebook to make a 2-3 button machine? If not, what's the preferred method for dealing with this problem?
Sigh.
If you can't put it in your pocket and use it for 20 hours at a stretch, what's the point?
Now there is nothing available with a future I'd spend money on.
OTOH, I have one of the big brick like Inspirons and that is a great portable computer, in the sense of being something I could take to some other building with a desk to use there if needs be.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
My Dell C600 runs linux and Win2k great. Infact RedHat 7.1 loves being docked, undocked and finds all my hardware including the MiniPCI modem, Ethernet, the Docked Ethernet and Docked SCSI adaptor as well as my different video modes for docked/undocked settings as well.
I got the C600 with 256 megs of ram, 20 gig drive, 1600x1400 lcd screen, 1ghz, ethernet (3com), modem (3com), 2nd battery, cdrom and all for ~2k.
This PC lets me play whatever game i want on the road, the Savage 128 bit video card runs great (does accelerated GL under NT, dunno about linux). Sound card is recognized from sndconf.. no "win" hardware on this machine.
Don't just buy a laptop because you think you need to write a document on the road, if anything you can be compiling code, playing a game, working on the same stuff you work on at your desk.
My laptop is great. It is what i use at work, what i use at home, and what i use on the road.
Most importantly. IT IS USEFULL!
The first was an Old ACER unit (P75) I bought it because at the time I needed a machine to run that other OS and a development environment that required larger than 640 x 480 resolution (Crappy Res I call it). At any rate I ws able to install Linux on it and it worked very well. The second was a Dell Unit I picked up at a computer Show used. It was a P233 w a 1024 x 768 screen and 6 gig HD. Of course linux worked very well on it and even saw the internal modem although I thankfully dont need to use modems. I now have a spanking new Sony VAIO PCGFX190. Its absolutely great. Runs Linux like a Dream everything is supported under the latest Vers of the Kernal. Modem, Pcmcia, Display under X at 1440 x 1050, Firewire and USB I cant complain at all except that I had it a week and the 850mhz PIII was replaced with a PIII 1Ghz unit in the stores... (Sigh.....) I supposed that if you are looking to run Linux on a laptop you should first examine the proposed laptop and then bang about on the web a bit examining the hardware compatability sites for any potential problems. Then you wont have any nasty surprises when you get your new toy home...
In this day and age...
Starting off an article with this phrase makes the rest of it seem trite. Also, it is typically used in a comparison versus centuries or even millennium past. It may seem to add some kind of flair or excitement, but in this article it draws attention from the point being made.
So flame me for being 'Conan the Grammarian' but nerds come in all flavors.
Whatever you do, don't buy a Micron. I bought a Gobook2, it died after 13 months, and rather than replace the part (power processor), they wanted to replace the mobo for more than I paid for the unit in the first place. The worst part was their non-existent tech support. I must have spent about 60 hours over a few months on hold with them. Contrast that with my first laptop, a refurbished NEC. When I dropped it and had to replace the LCD, they did it for free, two years out of waranty, within a week. Of course, that was years ago, so your experience may vary. I just picked up a low end Itronix on Ebay-I always wanted to have a notebook I could hit someone with.
A dead laptop is useless. If you travel further than your living room, pay special attention to battery life. Unfortunately, models change so quickly that magazine reviews can scarcely keep up, so you're at the mercy of the specs.
One thing that sold me on the VAIO F-series is that you can take out the floppy and put in a second battery. That's good for about five hours, total.
mouse on a notebook? have you been drinking?
So airlines have started allowing CD and DVD players onboard a plane?
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
Though they run Linux probably better than any other brand name, Toshiba's been building these things like tissue paper lately. They tend to distintegrate at the hinges. This is my second Toshiba, but I'm seriously looking toward something a bit more durable for my next machine; perhaps a Thinkpad.
The new ibook costs $1500 US in that configuration. Doesn't have the processor power, the card slots, or the HD size, but... that's a big price difference. Also, is the IBM's optical drive built-in, I really don't know the answer. I like Thinkpads, they and Mac are all I look at in notebooks, Sony is pretty but they break too often.
man what are you on about, the fella said the extended warranty was expensive and it is, geez dont get married huh
Yeah, they're not bad little machines. The company that I was working at was sold to a competitor and they're getting rid of hteir old equipment. I bought my Armada 7400 (PII 266 MHz) for $125 and got 256 MB of RAM for it from Micron/Crucial for ~$80. It's a handy little machine for spending $200, and I don't really have any complaints. And wouldn't you know that right after I bought it I just found a Dell Latitude CPx (PIII 600) in storage that they're selling for $600. I may just have to upgrade since I like the CPx much better than the 7400s (not to mention the speed increase). But if I were buying a laptop new I'd definitely go with an IBM Thinkpad. They're by far the highest quality laptops that I've ever used. Unfortunately they'll set you back $1500-$2000 for the low-end machines. I've seen Compaq Presario (I hear they're junk) and HP consumer-level laptops in stores for $1200-$1300 + a rebate, but I can't vouch for their quality. What I can say is definitely go for something with a nice long warranty. A faulty LCD panel for my Armada 7400 is almost $900 to replace (I had to replace a few at work) if it's not under warranty. And being portable you're much more likely to have something break on a laptop than your desktop machine.
best laptop i have had, though the ibm x21 looks good too. p3-600, 128MB, Ether+WinModem, thin and sexy...
How about a TRS-100. Costs only $250, it's robust and will last 16 hours on 4 AA batteries, what more could you ask for :-)
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
The fact that I can exchange parts with dang near any other armada (and many IBM laptops) makes it really nice
Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
At least I'm not the only one with an NEC, I got a Versa 2780MT from Affordable Portables for $599. They are kinda heavy aren't they? I love mine, it does everything I need it to do, and runs Linux & BeOS like it was designed to, of course the fact that it's something like 6-7 yrs old might have something to do with it...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Ahh, my IBM A20. How I love thee! You suit all my needs. You've got a floppy drive, two pcmcia slots, a serial and a vga port. Did I tell thee, my love, that I adore your sexy printer port, that sleek USB port, the mouse port. Let's not forget to mention your usefull 56k modem and an ethernet, sitting side by side. Built in sound card, hot swappable CD-ROM/DVD, and a 4 hour battery life tops it all off. So I take this moment to say thank you, my IBM A20, for being in my life.
P.S. That infared port kicks ass for those quick hot synching needs!
-- Ilya
Hi,
can anybody recommend an affordable PCMCIA (PC-Card) card for fast ethernet that draws little power and works with W2K's hibernate feature?
I disagree. I have a IBM T21, Linux installation was a pain and the keyboard broke within 1 month. Its going to be a Dell next.
Err...I hate to tell you this but they are NOT masculine in the least. They are not in touch with their feminine side, they ARE girlie through and through.
You, sir, are a girlie-man. Oooo look at the girlie-man with this candy-colored purse! It really sets off the color of your sundress.
You should be ashamed of yerself, boyo. Dump it. Dump it NOW and buy a manly laptop, purse-boy.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Follow up to this is a Slashdot:Rugged Laptops listing of the NY Times article on several different Rugged Laptops. (See How Tough Is Your Laptop? Some Are Built Like Tanks )
Every year many magazines to "hell" tests on laptops, and usually there is only one survivor (otherwise there are none) that one survivor is Dell. Not to mention Dell usually puts the latest and greatest stuff in their laptops. A friend of mine just got one, I think he said it's an 800 Mhz PIII 256 MB Ram, 15" TFT screen, GeForce2 Go video card (A VERY awesome feature) and a 20 GB Hard drive. Dell is pricey, my friends system cost ~$4000, but IMO it is worth it! I have a generic P-166 MMX w/ 16 MB ram, 12.1 800x600 TFT screen, and crap built in video/sound. I do not plan to upgrade this until I can afford a new Dell though, anything less would be a waste of money...well, Sony Comes close... Good luck with your purcahse, I do not know how well Dells run Linux, as I abandoned linux a few months ago after re-installing the system 12x times in 2 weeks due to constant crashing corrupting the non-fault tolerant filesystem, erasing a config file which the system refused to tell me the name of (but it was for NAT services) and would cause me to re-install. No I run 98SE/2K on my workstation, and XP Advanced Server for my server providing me w/ NAT.
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
I'm not too sure what others think, but I recently purchased a Compaq presario. I'm quite upset at the fact that they only support the the version of Windows Me that was provided by them (I've tried installing an OEM copy and had multiple problems). Windows 2000? I think not! The internal modem and PCMCIA port are non-functional. I've tried for several hours on the phone with different sections of the company to try and rectify the situation, but as far as they are concerned... they have my money and I'm no longer a real customer. I'd advise going with another company. Compaq have been real jerks to me since the day I purchased this P.O.S. :(
C is for cookie... C++ means I get 2... right? Steve "TheWebMan"
i bought one of the new iBook-2 machines and used it for a couple months. having owned and used three other laptops since 1992, i have to say that this is the best laptop i've ever used. why?
- quiet: you can't hear it while its running
- the screen size (1024 x 768) is really clear
- processor (G3-500Mhz) is faster than i need
for most of my tasks*
- USB & Firewire from the ground up.
- runs lots of good software (incl. adobe & macromedia stuff)
- good USB midi-audio support for making music.
- 1.3" thick
- 4.5 hour battery life (really!)
- price <= IBM ThinkPad, VIAO, etc.
couldn't be happier with this laptop.
i can whole-heartedly recommend it.
regards,
johnRpenner.
* i use the machine for: writing, web page design, MP3 playing, CD ripping/burning, scripting, framemaker, quark, illustrator, minor photoshop work - the speed is more than adequate.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner
This is excellent! I am just considering purchasing a laptop to put linux on.
I am very seriously considering a little Sony Picturebook. I know that there are a lot of unix Picturebook enthusiasts out there. Does anyone on Slashdot have experience with this laptop? And, more importantly, other competitors? I am mostly out for the size -- I do not care about the camera. It is all about size and performance.
Thanks!
i recently recieved a dell inspiron 8000 as a gift (no complaints its free) anyway im runnin a p3 at a gig flat with a geforce2go card(personaly id a spent that money for somethin else)i mean if your gonna buy a labtop your gettin it for its abitlity to travel not for the grapics which a labtop CAN NOT provide. If your gonna play games go get a pc you save your self dissapointment. The graphics on my labtop are a step up from what im used :(its sad isnt it) but it dosnt do the system justice in a manner i guess. anyway to what a lot of you want to know if your thinking about a dell for a labtop i recomend it there great but expensive (if it were my money i MIGHT have gone else where) another thing dont try and save money when it comes to ram get the best you can my GIFT came with only 128megs of sdram and for todays resource hungry systems you need more just to run a program stable and me being somewhat of an excesive person i have ordered two 256mb sticks of ram to replace what i have now(128mrgd period) i cant go any higer but it will do just fine
p.s. look for what you need dont get something which does more for you then you need. personally i fell people are spending more moneyh then they need to on pcs and notebooks. they figure they need the best and newest system to date and they dont so pick whats right for you and does the least amount of damage on your checkbook
have fun and try bein a nerd
its fun
and we do (at least i do) get the girls
im drunk so forgive the last three lines :)
Then also demand that they give you a REAL version of windoze rather than some crippled pervert recovery-only monstrosity. If you have to have winders, then at least have the option of giving out burned copies to your friends.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
That's the one thing I hate about buying a laptop. I paid $2400 for a Dell Inspiron 4000 with a 600 MHz PIII, 64 megs of ram (crucial.com has sodimms MUCH cheaper than Dell), an 8MB ATI Rage 128 Mobility, 8x DVD, and a 14" 1024x768 screen just last November. Still works great and is more than fast enough, but it'd be nice to have a faster video card sometimes so I can use it as a second desktop to play games on it with a docking station. Ah well.
Lucent wavelan bronze. An old card from someone else who gave up on it. Managers get the best around here, engineers get their cast offs. Other than the small screen and doze this laptop is nice.
I have replaced the floppy/cd drive with a second li ion battery, something I strongly recomend. On one battery I don't get much life.
Yep, that's why I use my Intellimouse optical.
Try www.outletcomputer.com, I got a P233 thinkpad 770 for $400. 4GB hd, 80MB RAM, 14.1 screen.
Hoping to get a Sparc Tadpole in the near future (and rip any Sun OS's off and Debianise the little bugger G)
Currently running a Vaio Picturebook (The Crusoe one) and having no probs (Tho haven't got round to Linuxing it - still running ME for a few Windoze apps that I need to run)
just to clear this up...
the hinge problems have affected a small percentage of wallstreet I + II laptops, manufactured in 1998.
since that time, both the lombard and pismo (same enclosure) moved to a different hinge design and thus eliminated the problem.
of course, the ibooks (all models) and the tibook haven't had any reported difficulties in this area.
it was good to get that out of my system.
I ordered mine directly in Japan. Get more info about the cute little things at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libretto-L1
But the greatest advantage of the stick is that you don't have to move your hands to away.. I would love to have one of those on my cordless ergo keyboard, especially when I'm to lazy to leave my bed.. ;)
pros: super small, 1024x768 screen, built-in ethernet, ati mobility 3d
cons: ethernet, vga, pcmcia, usb, and sound all use irq 10. everything works via irq sharing except for the sound.
if you don't need sound, it's a nice, small, lightweight laptop. but if you like to listen to music while coding, you're pretty much SOL.
My company bought these machines about a year and a half to two years ago as power machines (DVD player, 192MB RAM, 11GB HD).
I am forced to run Windows 2000 on it because our IT departement lets us read E-mail either using Outlook (no internet protocols enabled on Exchange server and won't be) or Outlook Web Access (which required IE 5.x with ActiveX support to work properly).
Never the less, I also run Linux on it (SuSE 7.2 disto). And nearly everything works perfectly. The SuSE X setup even recognized and configured for the fact the I have two mice (internal and USB).
I network and dialup using PCMCIA Xircom CreditCard (xirc2ps).
The only thing that I haven't got to work is Infrared (but I haven't tried very hard).
Hans Voss
---
"I have no special talents, I am just passionately curious" -- Albert Einstein
Why have a bulky, old laptop when you can get something designed specificly for MP3s. I got a NEO 25 about 6 months ago. It's an MP3 player that has a 10G laptop harddrive inside. It connects via USB. It can hold any file, so it's also a portable HD. I bought mine for $400, but the company that makes them just came out with a new version, so the old one is $200. Check the site. www.ssiamerica.com. The NEO 25 is in the 'specials' section.
and how does a USB adaptor at 12Mbps manage 100BaseT then? Go iBook.
Although W2K performance is a little sketchy, Linux seems to do quite well. I have the Japanese version., I don't know whether it is out here yet. It has the Transmeta Crusoe 667Mhz chip, 256Mb RAM, and 30 Gig hard drive. Linux runs great, including pcmcia and usb. The camera is supposedly supported under 2.4.7, I know, i'm lame for not trying yet. I have the quad capacity battery, which still leaves the damn little thing so damn portable. Coupled with a pcmcia wireless web device *used to be ricochet, we'll see what I will use next. Anyway, the battery allowed me over 10 hours of use. I played around a bit in the airport in tokyo, closed the lid, hopped on the plane... opened it as soon as I could. Watched a bunch of TV episodes on the plane, listened to a bunch of music (it was on during the entire portion of the flight that laptops were allowed.) After getting home I used it for a few more hours. As a portable computing device, I really love it. It's not the fastest, it's not the smallest... actually, maybe it is... but its the first laptop that I could type on that I carry around in my non laptop bag along with the rest of the equipment required for a stroll in Golden Gate Park.
I'm writing this from my second-hand 366MHz Vaio - $750 from ebay.
:)
I was looking for bare-bones and expandability, which mainly meant USB and firewire and not having anything that I didn't need.
Vaios being slick-looking had nothing to do with it
stay frosty and alert
I installed Debian next to osX on one. Do you know about sound support for that?
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
ACER will always be bargain bin fodder... ditto Dell, i know three people that have Dell laptops and they all have had nightmarish issues with them: dead HD within 4 months, dead screen in 6 months, and the other was just dead after 9 months...
LAN parties? LAN parties? are you nominating yourself for Loser of the Year or what?
Win2k, me and xp can't do a dual-head setup?? Crazy. Can linux do that? (I've never even thought to look into it.)
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
I bought a refurbished Fujitsu i4177 from ClearanceClub.com some months ago. It has a
Celeron 500, 64MB Ram (upgraded to max of 192),
800x600 screen, USB, etc. So far I positively love
the machine. I installed Redhat 7.1 on it, and it
just worked. Sound, video, etc. Even accelerated
works. The Shogo demo worked nicely.
The only problem I have had is for a while I could not get sound to come out. It turned out to be not a problem with the sound card, but with a connection between the card and speakers called the volume control *ahem*.
I use a Sony Vaio PCG-F540.....I am pretty happy with it. It's only a 500Mhz, but it seems faster being so small :)
Sony should be able to cover that spec. iBook still better though...
I bought a sony vaio pcg-505f a couple of years ago for $1300 and it's worked wonderfully. It's really small and light. The power adapter is also small and light, which makes a big difference.
The only problem I've had is that the battery died. Not a big deal to me as I don't really use it on the plane while flying.
I run redhat and I actually use it mostly for storage. It's great to save and distribute my digital camera photos when travelling - or to load my rio 500 with audiobooks and tunes.
I would say less than the weight of a magazine if computer shopper was still in it's heyday, but nowadays it's about the size and weight of 2-3 magazines at the airport. It's always small enough to pack in my smallest bag.
I think the price of the vaio family has steadily climbed as sony adds features. It looks like the average price has climbed to $2500 or so...
Oh, I almost forgot, the 4MB ATI graphic chipset (a little weak in comparison 8MB/16MB ATI's or the newer GeForce2Go chipsets) runs all my older SW games such a Dark Forces II, Rogue Squadron (my personal favorite), and Episode 1 Racer flawlessly. Pop on a USB joystick and you're ready to game (at least older games anyway).
-revoke
(void) signal(SIGALRM, (alarm_fired=1)); if (alarm_fired) printf("Revoke is clueless!\n");
Plus, the DOS/Win combination lets me play all the games in my abandonware collection...
Because it has no objective data to go along with a wild claim. The TiBook is a fine computer, and the only laptop currently able to use 1GB of RAM. But just saying it's cool ain't good enough.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Well, as everyone else said, the Titanium is sweet. However, if you can't shell out 3500, you can still get a decent deal. Since you are pointing at the IBM I'm assuming you don't mind a machine that comes preloaded with the Spawn of Evil (TM) and can either use that or reformat. Also, since I work retail in one of my jobs, I'll give you an idea of what you could pick up in a store. HP does pretty well with the N5470, and Compaq is fairly comparable with the 1215US. They should fall around $2100 and $1900 respectively. Toshiba has the 4600 Satellite Pro at $2400 that is pretty good, although I'm not too crazy about the 16MB Trident as the video adapter. That is offset a bit by the fact that it's a bit more rugged than the others. Those are about the best things I see on the sales floor that I'd actually like to use for a laptop. As for under $1000, you could actually probably dredge up a PIII or Duron 600 laptop around somewhere that would do decently. The HP N5470 can be found here. The Compaq 1215 can be found here. And the Toshiba is here.
Not so. 256 MB of RAM in a laptop is nothing. I've got that in my 2 year-old Armada.
Mobile Athlon 4 chips are widely available now. I was at Best Buy the other day and saw HP and Compaq laptops with mobile Athlon 4 chips in them.
I haven't been looking that closely at the video chips available, but a quick browse past Nvidia's site shows that only Dell and Toshiba are making systems using the GeForce2Go. Unfortunately, neither of them are using Athlon 4 processors in any of their systems. Though I have been hearing rumours lately that Dell may start shipping a couple models with an Athlon 4, I wouldn't put much stock in them. They seem to go around and around with AMD every year and then just before they cut a deal Intel gives them a better price to stay Intel-only.
At any rate, a system with his desired specs shouldn't be too far off in the future. The GeForce2Go and the Athlon 4 are both fairly new products, but I imagine that by the end of the year he'd be able to find a system equipped as described.
'It is simply not possible for any vendor -- even Microsoft -- to develop a high-quality patch in only a few days.'
Who said that??? Who the hell would dare say such a thing?! Obviously, not someone familiar with Free/Open Software.
Defaulting to the lower speed was pretty standard among clone makers for a few years. The reason was the some older software had issues running on a faster clock (ie. actually expected to run on a machine of a precise speed).
Though most of them had a Turbo button on the case.
NOW you're talking... the TiBook has the best feature set for the money... nothing compares, period... best laptop available.
...of course!
As far as I've tried, yes. My roommate has a Yamaha onboard chip in his desktop that he's still fighting with under Linux. My sound is (almost) perfect on my laptop, under FreeBSD.
There's stilla couple small issues to deal with, but nothing major.
1600x1200 actual pixel screen (!), clean audio (kernel 2.4 native support), cdrw (ide-scsi works), pcmcia/cardbus (I'm using wireless ethernet right now as I type), suspend/resume, firewire and usb. ethernet 10/100 is eepro100 - one of the best.
yes, it has a winmodem, but its also a LINMODEM too (at ... OK).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
One of my friends had a PowerBook G4, the screen seems to be rathere flimsy! The good thing is that the screen is supported by titanium. The really good thing about these computers is the operating system is available for them can handle tihngs that the old mac laptops just couldn't do. (Remember the evil black and white inactive screens!!) The "slip-in" cd drive is a good idea but then again there is the need for a external 3.5 inch floppy drive that from a weight point of view is quite annoying as if you want to use this laptop on the go you really need to tote a floppy drive with you. In the end the Power book is a rather good machine if you are ready to cough up the needed money to buy one :)
(And not only this they can be used in a lot of different ways, people that are involved in graphic design will love these books as they run applicaitons such as Adobe photo-shop wiht ease)
Ohh my spleen
CHS?
"Witty Phrase."
Of course we are not the only ones that can use 802.11b, we were just the first. I use 802.11 on my iBook, on my PowerBook G3 and my Cube. Great technology. I don't know where you get the notion that the AirPort basestations spontaneously burst into flames. As far as I have heard that has never happened. Dell batteries however... (and of course the unfortunate incident with the 5300-battery in Apples labs some years back). As to the one-button mouse I actually like having only one mouse-button. And of course the iBook doesn't have a mouse (just a trackpad). If you want to use a mouse you must get a USB-mouse and plug into one of the USB-ports. I don't quite see what keeps you from buying a 2-button (or 3-button) mouse for the iBook. OSX supports multibutton mice straight from the box, and most multibutton USB-mice work fine on MacOS 9.
Terje
That means that 800x600 - still by far the most common resolution for lower-end laptops - is no good. The next resolution up, however, 1076x768, is just fine. Obviously yet more pixels are nice, but the huge, qualitative difference from "can't be used for programming" to "can be used" comes at the 1076-pixel mark.
Unfortunately, most manufacturers and retailers seem to treat screen resolution as some kind of trade secret. Look at any advert for a laptop, and you'll see the screen's physical size right up near the top (as though that mattered!), but 99% of ads just won't tell you the resolution.
My poking around the refurbed-laptop market yielded the following rule of thumb, which I supply on an AS IS basis :-)
- 12.2" = 800x600
- 13.3" (rare) = 1024x768
- 14.4" = 1024x760 or 1200xWhatever
- Bigger screens are too expensive for me even to have considered!
No doubt there are MANY exceptions to this, but the bottom line seems to be that you can pretty much ignore machines with 12.2" screens. And buy the cheapest 13.3"-or-better you can find!4WIW, I bought a refurbed ThinkPad 600E about eighteen months ago, and it's been an absolute delight. Its 13.3" 1024x768 screen is just fine and dandy. But no doubt other machines offer that for better prices these days.
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
A MacSE isn't so old. Now, my Timex-Sinclair, that's old. But the 2K of memory is awesome....
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
We have three 4600's in my office (I am in charge of computer purchases) and the only problem in the last three months was one cdburner wouldn't burn, though it would read fine...
SuSE powerPC edition. You can run native mac apps on top of it like adobe photoshop and java compilers. In the x86 world we can not run most if any windows apps so linuxpowerpc is the better deal. If I could buy a new machine, I would buy a mac and do this. I would love to run photoshop and doom.
http://saveie6.com/
well it can do it, but not w/out drivers from ati for it (and ati doesn't do drivers for that, mirroring works though)
(ati mobility pro)
Need a Catering Connection
Ridiculously.
Batteries are a real rip-off item in the laptop industry. They don't cost the OEMs anywhere near what they an charge for them and they are extremely high-margin(profit) items, so they are responsible for several disturbing design trends in laptops:
1) All efforts to standardize on batteries have failed, despite several industry-wide attempts. The OEMS simply don't want you to have commodity batteries. Hardware lock-in lives on.
2) The OEMs *want* poor battery life, so that customers feel they have to buy at least one extra battery just to get by. The margin on an extra battery can be half as much as the margin on the whole laptop!
3) Have you noticed that you can't even buy replacement Li-Ion *cells* to fix old, tired battery packs? Granted, such repairs aren't for the faint-hearted, and you need to make sure charging circuitry, etc. is right to avoid fire hazard, but so far as I can tell from a search for single-A size cells to freshen a Toshiba Libretto battery pack a couple of weeks ago, these things might as well be unobtainium.
Laptop batteries are one of the great hardware scams of our time - right up there with computerized engine control units and CFC-free refrigeration and air conditioning.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
The M300 is by far the best laptop I've owned so far (and I've owned over 25 in my day). It is light enough to take with you everywhere, and has most of the needed ports already built in (no need for a clunky port replicator). If you need drives you can snap on its MEU docking slice which adds a floppy and a drive of your choice (DVD, LS-210, CDRW, 24X CD, Extra Battery, Extra HD). When I travel I usally just take the base unit. When I want to watch movies on the road I snap on the MEU (it only adds another 2.5 lbs for a total of around 6).
A great design by Compaq. You basically have an ultralight and an all-in-one in one unit. Also, the dual monitor support is great for programming. I plug in a 19 inch (1600x1200) to code on and bring up the manuals on the laptop screen (1024x768). The only down points of this laptop are the 90-minute battery life (upgrade to the 6-cell battery), and the touchpad (my other 24 laptops all had pointer sticks, I guess I just need to get used to it).
This laptop replaced a 2.2lb Mitsubishi Amity CN2 (with an 8GB drive modifiaction). Mitsubishi should have continued this line of 'tops. The Amity ran everything (Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD, etc.) and had all it's ports built in, with 96MB RAM, and 800x600 resolution. The best Mini ever (puts the older Libretto series to shame). If only you could fine one with a faster processor than a P200, then I'd still be using it (now it's my dad's travel laptop).
(void) signal(SIGALRM, (alarm_fired=1)); if (alarm_fired) printf("Revoke is clueless!\n");
Just bought one of these: http://www.microtop.com.au/se/se_spec.htm
RH runs it well, takes to whoever threw up a site about the mode lines needed to get the 1600x1280 screen working...
:-)
Damn, it's a nice system.
Not that I am aware of, sorry.
. . .
Please don't flame me, as a helpful AC ( in this post ) has already mentioned this machine's existence.
But it too me searching through 700 posts to fnd a reference and I don't have any mod points . .I've been thinking hard about this one. Byte Reviewed the new Libretto L1 here and it sounds awesome. Not only Crusoe based, but has Bluetooth too. Which may not be to your liking, or cause grief on 2.4ghz, depending on your air interface preferences. But hey, I got a Bluetooth GPRS mobile and it's soooo tempting :)
The informed AC gave a very cool reference for Linux info : on Yahoo Groups to which I can only add this picture gallery froma company I found who sells the things properly localised, but, sadly, not with a distro.
Please forgive me if my post already redundant, but this little machine could rock.
If that ain't goodenough for you, tak a look at the reflective TFT models with NEC called Versa Daylight. I'm currently biased towards battery life, for reasons well posted in other arguments.Oooh - oo I just saw NEC have some MIPS based things that look like rebadged HP Jornada 720s, only nicer looking. Wonder if anyone can get Linux support on these???
1. The basic thing you do with a laptop is carry it around. It needs to be small and light. 2. If you are away from a wall outlet you need power supply options. Manufacturer specs always lie. 3. If you do multimedia presentations you need horsepower and good video out. These three reasons led me to buy a Sony Vaio Picturebook. I have an "old" Intel powered model - everything works under Linux (no internal modem). 400 Mhz Pentium II, 128 Mb Ram, 12 Gb HD in 2.2 lbs with standard battery. I also ghave a double battery which gets me to Paris and back on the train (400 km). Modems belong in phones not in computers. That way when a new technology comes along you change your phone -> GPRS for example. That is why I am pleased to have an "old" Vaio with IRDA. Portable computers if treated with care last a long time. Much longer than a desktop. Running Linux on a 400 Mhz PII makes the computer powerfull enough for most tasks. At the moment it is doing a part time job as a developpment web application server (Postgresql, Tomcat...) RedHat Linux on the Vaio C1XD/S
realkiwi
I'm running redhat 7.1 on my thinkpad a21p without a problem. The 1600x1200 is truly awesome.
I have the 4600 dual booted with Win2k and redhat 7.1 with no problems. (after a xf8config file hack)
I don't use the dvd except as a cd, and I don't use the wireless.
I think the vidio card is supported in the latest XFree, but I have not tried it.
Randy
seems to be the easiest and most portable format for centuries... But otherwise I use a Libretto (toshiba) 110ct. 32mb (stock) and a 4gig disk. I can compile all that I need for Openbsd work (and windoze)
I wish it was a G4 or new iBook, but even this old machine--the bottom-end 333 Mhz model from 3 years ago--runs Windows just fine, including some heavy-duty apps like Director. Even some realtime 3D apps (Virtual PC's weak spot) run within the bounds of useability (Descent 3's editor with full textures). Is emulated Windows as snappy as non-emulated Windows? No way--I'd want a faster CPU if I used Windows heavily every day. But I develop for Mac and Windows both, and Windows is a necessity for me, so I bought a brand-new PC and a PowerBook around the same time. Virtual PC on the PowerBook has worked so well my actual PC collects dust--it's faster for Windows itself, but slower for most other tasks (despite havinbg better specs) than the same app native on my PowerBook. And the convenience of 2 OS's at once on one machine beats networking any day. It starts up Windows in seconds--I can be in and out of Windows faster than my PC can even start up. I can't wait to have VPC running on X.1. Plus it's just plain cool to have Mac and Windows windows sharing one screen, and be dragging stuff back and forth, sharing drives, and copying and pasting graphics. Sharing a single 'net connection is cool too. I get the best of both world--a great OS (I started on Windows but am more productive on Mac), great hardware design (the old black-and-bronze, still a classic), the long useful life that a Mac typically provides, AND, when I need it, seamless Windows convenience. I run an entire Web and CD development business (and the odd game of Descent 3) from this thing, and it may well be another year before it makes sense to upgrade it. I do wish there was a high-end iBook (cheaper than a titanium G4) with a bit bigger screen--that might tempt me to buy now.
Perhaps you should also have the "attorney general" look into suing whoever supplied you with your education.
One of the things I really like about Apple's trackpad software is I can do a tap-and-a-half and have it function as a click-lock. I can then move my cursor to where ever I please and release with another tap. With Windows, I can do a tap-and-a-half but the software releases the click-lock as soon as I stop moving my mouse. This is just stupid. How can I configure the trackpad to work the way it's supposed to?
I see no one has mentioned fujitsu yet...or maybe I just missed it. What a perfect time I am shopping for a laptop. My budget is about $1200. I found a great fujitsu for 1399 (over my budget but I think i can handle it). I found that the asian manufacturers tend to have better deals (or is it me?), with maybe sony being an exception. Toshiba, fujitsu have great values when compared to gateway and HP. Two american companies with good prices are compaq (cheap and sucky), and dell (very good systems). Anyway back to the fujitsu...perfect one is here:: http://www.fujitsupc.com/www/products_notebooks.sh tml?products/notebooks/c_series
That is not true at all, for $450 (after $100 cash rebate) I got a 766 celeron w/ a 13.2" tft screen, 64mb Ram (which I upgraded to 192 for $25), a 6 gig hd, and an internal modem. I also added a 10mpbs ethercard to hook into my school's and my home lan for $20. The graphics card sucks, but Im using emacs and star office on my laptop, not playing quake. -K
What many people here forget to mention is linuxpowerpc can run native mac apps like MS-word, and photoshop. This is diffinetly a plus. Macosx comes wiht some but not nearly all the tools that I am used to with linux. SuSE has linux powerpc with close to 2,000 apps and I believe Debian might have a stable powerpc distro or is working on one( don't know the anwser).
Anyway if anyone who is reading this is thinking about buying an intel laptop, remember that you can't run windows apps wiht linuxX86. But with linuxpowerpc you can always stay in linux and still have all the apps like MS-word, IE, DOOM, photoshop, etc.
http://saveie6.com/
Just make sure you upgrade to the 2.4 kernel because the 2.2 kernel apparently doesn't support power management very well. --Bud
This is anectdotal I know (and others may have other experiences), but I have never had any major problems with the PowerBooks I have owned. I have used the following: PowerBook 170, PowerBook 5300ce, PowerBook 3400, PowerBook G3 (WallStreet) and I now use an iBook (2001). I still own (and use) the 3400 and G3 and they are really workhorses. The 3400 has a slightly loose hinge (but not too bad after 5 years of use) and the G3 has had its harddisk changed due to excessive noise from its fan, but that is all. Not too bad for a total of 8 years (5 for the 3400 and 3 for the WallStreet) daily use. Terje PS: I'm really not an "Anonymous Coward", but I don't read this forum very often :-( so I don't bother to register
If you're handy with a soldering iron, you might want to try something like this.
I just LOVE vladinator's site! Especially the "fash" section, where I learned to cut the bottom off of an old shirt to use as a hair enhancement! Oh, and the "dance party" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read vladinator's emails! Here you will discover how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have a pizza party? A fash party? Go to the mall with all of your friends? Have a sleepover and call boys on the phone?
In short, if you haven't checked out vladinator's site, you don't know what you're missing!
TiBook. FP?
Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
I've used everything from the Tecra 730, up to the Satellite Pro 8100. Beautiful machines, and they run linux flawlessly.
I have a dell inspiron 5000. It's very nice with a 15" 1400x1050 res screen. As far as the things that I want to get, it goes: Screen (res + size), Proc speed, ram, HD, vid card. Most people won't be using their laptop for games anyway, so a powerful video card wouldn't be very useful.
If you want something decent for under $1000, you've pretty much gotta go used. I got a PII 400, 256mb, 14.1", 12GB for $400 off of eBay. ~Will
Why is everyone so cheap?
i have a T20 myself, not a trivial install, but RH 6.2 and it work well.
"i was saying gnu-rd"
anyone know where i can get an old laptop cheap? liek a P200 with a few GB of space? i had a thougth saturday that they would make great portable mp3 machines, load up and plug it in to your friend stereo for a parties and such.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
I got to use a three-month old TiBook with OS X this weekend. I had to give it back today, and I'm going through withdrawal.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
IBM laptops are great, they work wonderfully. I *have* the T20 that was mentioned in the writeup. Winmodem or no, every piece of hardware works in Linux. The winmodem is Lucent based, and has Linux support.
Best I've used is still a Dell Latitude CSx. Was metal cased, and very nice. Everything worked great and it was tiny.
http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/whitepapers /0206-0799-A.html
Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
I've been using a compaq 1800T with linux and windows for almost a year now, with very few problems. At the time I bought it, it was easily the most feature complete laptop I found for the money. And the 1400x1050 screen resolution (which works under linux) is pretty stunning...
One thing for potential compaq buyers: don't pay extra for memory upgrades from compaq. You can do far better at other places on the net (ebay included). I bought mine with 64M installed, and upgraded to 192M for *half* the price that compaq was charging...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I was sold on this one after taking a friend's out on a test drive. One of the sleekest yet solidy built machines I've seen in a while. I'm planning to buy one within the next few months. It's not below $1000, though (I think it's more around $1500). I'm pretty optimistic they'll get the issues with OS X worked out so that more applications work properly. I haven't done too much research into loading Linux PPC onto the new iBooks, are there any hardware/driver conflicts out there to watch out for?
I have a Compaq 1700T and have been extremely happy with it so far. The performace is excelent, it is just perfect between lugging the 10lb + books around and the non-performing 2lb stuff. And, it looks great. Linux is a pretty easy install, the win-modem is a bummer, but other than that it works great with linux. If anyone is looking for a new laptop, i would highly recomend this one.
I do a lot of 3d game programming and development, so I've been holding off for a decent laptop that can match our development systems. Basically, I want to get an Athlon 4 based system, with a geforce 2 go, and 256 megs of ram. As soon as I can get something like that, there will be a point to buying a laptop. Until then, I guess I'm just chained to my home and work machines.
The most important thing on a laptop is the display, Toshiba has the best.
Ask your local NBA team. They seem to have all the "inside scoop" on things like that.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
I grabed my compaq armada 1500c for $400. It is a celeron 300Mhz/96Meg Ram/4.0 GB hdd. For the price, it was well worth it. The batery life is at about 3 hours a pop with about an hour to charge. I have no complaints and while it is far from being a desktop replacement(as in no dvd), it does its job. Unless your looking for a system that can compare to a desktop, I think used is the way to go, if you can find one in good condition that is.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
A "winmodem" isn't such a bad thing for a laptop computer; having an extra power-draining chip for signal processing is bad for the battery life. 'Course, there are all those compatibility issues; but hasn't the interface been mostly standardized? Why haven't alternative-OS drivers been forthcoming?
I just got a Sony Vaio XG-700K, and it's a pretty sweet package. It comes with seperate DVD and Cd-RW drives. The screen is 1024 x 768 XGA and pretty crisp and can be replaced with a privacy screen for cheap off eBay.
It's a 750 megahertz PIII, has built in modem but no ethernet. With two PCMCIA slots, though, you can jam an ethernet card and 802.11b card with no problems.
Downsides? Everything is expensive. Battery is $250 (200 on eBay), extra AC adapter is $100 or so, and so on.
It's a great laptop, and there are linux drivers for the custom stuff (like the Jogdial).
I have a Dell Inspiron 8000 - The one with a 32MB AGP card, 15" screen with 1600x1200 res. Now there is a niiice machine!
I had a hard time installing linux on it though - but since the 2.4 kernel came out I had no probs =)
Pity that they (supposedly) don't support linux any more.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
This might not be a popular response for /., but I have a bunch of laptops and notice that I always carry the lightest one if in any way possible. For most of the things you do on the road, anything you can buy nowadays is plenty powerful enough. Another rather important consideration if battery life. I have pretty good luck borrowing power in airports and hotels, but a laptop that shuts down after less than 3 hours is annoying.
As far as quality goes, I had pretty good luck with Dell, some with Sony and none with Toshiba and IBM. But YMMVW. If your company is buying, get the replace-and-send-back warranty.
Not all notebooks are crammed into a 2 inch thick plastic box these days. Mine's in a 1 inch thick titanium box.
I just got a Dell Inspiron 4000 for college where I'll be starting the University of Utah this fall! P3 800 with the 59 hour battery, my first laptop I'm pretty excited even though I have been using AMD chips for a while now but the Athlon 4 does not seem to be dropping in price very fast. -Edward www.edwardpultar.com
Are there people our there running Linux on laptops that are under 4 pounds ? What are your opinions on these ?
I have seen asus is making laptops now... Their hardware is known for greatness but how about their laptops? Any one tried them?
Here. This link should help you answer that question.
Shawn Asmussen
Although these are great, the problem with small laptops are the extensions that come with it, you have to carry your cd player, floppy drive and docking bar with you (they are kind of necessary to me...) and it gets quite annoying to have all this stuff onto your laptop... Personnaly i wouldn't refer these to the ones who need these medias frequently...
if you dont have the $ for a Tibook, the g3 laptops are getting cheaper. especially the first generation ones. most of the problems with the first gen g3s are gone these days. not to mention, who wouldnt want a cheap laptop that can run osx?
"Alot of people don't know what they are doing...and most are pretty good at it." -George Carlin
I have a compaq e500 that I got from computersurplusoutlet.com for 920 dollars. it came with 64 megs of ram (that i quickly upgraded to 192), and a 600 mhz processor. It's a real nice machine, and best of all, everything is supported under linux.
I've been using one of these for about 6 months now. I got it refurbished (whoopidy doo, it still works great). The biggest problem I've found with all laptops is the mouse. Do you get the touchpad? The pencil eraser? Some sort of rollerball? What? I hate the touchpad, I hate the rollerball. The pencil eraser (IBM) is good.
I bought a Toshiba 3025 off of Ebay last year that I really like. At 3 lbs it's actually lighter than the newer models, but the screen res is lower. Pretty good battery life, no HW problems. Works wonderfully for my life as a student, because it takes up very little room in my briefcase and is light enough to carry around all day without causing back pain. One of my previous notebooks was a Toshiba 486, also very reliable. Less flashy than the similar VAIOs but comes with two card slots. I do wish they would make a 1024x768 model with the 10" screen rather than the 11".
---- I'm going to lead you kicking and screaming, giggling and laughing into the future.
I'm a first time laptop buyer, long time mac user. I just bought an Apple iBook dvd model, for $1630 after tax in nyc, including 256 megs of ram, dvd drive, 10 gig hard disk, two usb ports, 1 firewire, 1 ethernet, modem, audio out, vga out. The screen is gorgeous, and the keyboard is very comfortable (i sent some really long emails yesterday from my parent's place from the iBook.) I'm just about ecstatic about the iBook, it's been a complete joy.
consider non-brand names like segar, prostar, or winbooks. I got a few years ago a top of the line pro-star that had a 14.1", DVD, 128M mem, 466MHZ processor (that was the top) for over $1200 less then the brand names (i.e. DELL, IBM, etc...)
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Okay, you can accuse me of bias all you like, but I rather like my NEC laptop. I've got a Versa SXi, and had a Versa FX (no longer produced) before that. Both work *extremely* well (at least, they do with Red Hat 7.2).
Chris Tembreull
"My karma just ran over your dogma."
Works like a charm, mine has both DVD and CD-Burner, and runs BSD Unix with an splendid UI (i.e OS X) 4-5 hour on one battery, depending on screen brightness and if you use things like 802.11b all the time. If you prefer x86, take a look at IBM thinkpad X21. Lously battery, no IrDA, but everything else is OK, for a PC. If you want CD/DVD and diskdrive, just get the dockingbay that is placed under it. Its among the most sturdy docking bays beneath a computer I have seen. Its like being able to choose a "thin laptop" or a "a bit more thick laptop".
Is an IBM Thinkpad i1400. It's a decent thinkpad, winmodem, but intel NIC (integrated). the screen is only 800x600 (blah!) but the newer low end (read: ~1,000-1,500$) all come with 1024x768 Active Matrix TFT.
:(
Mine is a celeron 500MHz (this is good, as it is the 100MHz FSB version, not the 66MHz Crap they put in desktops).
I have installed linux on it, in fact, there are about 5 different websites out on the web that tell me how to install linux on this exact model. I couldn't get the modem working tho
If you want the best laptop for LINUX, then i would have to say IBM and Apple's iBook are your best bets. Sure, the iBook has a shitty CPU in it, but, it uses very little battery life (compared to a p3). And apple is all about not being compatible with the rest of the world. Well friends, when it comes to laptops, there are only a few things that matter. and CPU architecture isn't one of them. If you are running Linux on an x86 machine, or Linux on a PPC machine, its' all the same. I bet, if you are a linux guru that wants to run all the latest beta shitware on sourceforge, you wont want the iBook, because it will take some porting to get it to compile/running properly. but if you stick with software that comes with your distribution, then x86 and PPC are all the same.
For 1,300$ base end, and 1,900$ for high end iBook, i consider it a good buy for a linux laptop. (I paid $950 for my IBM 500MHz Celeron, 192MB ram, 800x600 active matrix TFT, NIC, winmodem, generic sound, i810 video (intel's), I think it was a steal about when i bought it 9 months ago)
If you were you, i would stay away from Dell laptops. For one, they are not like Dell desktops. They arent the "stable" machine on the block like the optiplex is. Not only that, but Dell is dropping Linux support on the desktop, so you can forget getting a Dell that is gonna run linux any better than IBM or apple. All in all, with my experience with dell laptops (i service them, gateway, and Apple's laptops under warranty where i work), I would have to say that Dells, and certain models of Apple's are the least reliable. (apple PB g3 Wallstreet comes to mind! Don't worry, bronze kb is a good one)
I hope you like my brief review, this is just my experience.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Here's my shortlist of vendors who preload Linux on laptops:
I encourage other posters to add to the list.
i use a (new) ibook (500mhz g3, 128mb, 10gb, dvd model) running macosx. it cost $1499 but included an additional 256mb ram. my only complaints: no pcmcia slot (yada), no ir and "only" a 10mb disk. otherwise, it's zippy, light and quite sexy. further, i get apache, mysql, php, perl, ... on a machine that also runs photoshop, illustrator, imovie, itunes, and ms office...even windows apps (not that i indulge)! no pc laptop comes close.
>-headbonz-
year by year
the monkey's mask
reveals the monkey.
- basho
ps: did i mention the builtin 10/100 ethernet, 56kbs modem, usb (x2)and firewire ports?
the apple iBook is a nice little machine too. way better price than the PowerBook. if you want a mac, that's the way to go.
p.s. the IBM and Apple portables are the only ones i've ever seen that survive long-term abuse. that's something to take seriously when thinking about a laptop.
For me, ergonomics plays a bigger role than the processor speed and all those fixins, next to that I'd like a nice clear screen, doesn't have to be big.<p>
I Just purchased and recieved a Dell inspiron 8000. Very nice, 1Ghz, 256mb pc100, 32mb geforce2go 3d card, a 8x DVD and a 8x CD-RW, a 15" screen. This thing can fly, and play with the big boys. And it wasn't too bad at $2,400.
Captain Napalm, aka Sheridan Hurd Woohoo go dawgs!!! University of Washington rocks!!
New iBook
'nuff said
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n
Are there any places that will let you build your own, I don't mean like how dell lets you pick the ram and hd sizes...but rather..ok here is the shell, a screen like so, you can buy the HD ram, mainboard, mini-pci ethernet stuf...etc...and put it together yourself perhaps?? I would love to do this, it would probably also leave you with a more easily upgradable laptop for down the road, and save you that stupid MS tax...
Look no further. Expensive beast, but well worth it. This page has a comparison of all the Thinkpad T models (or is that Model Ts?). You can get the T22 pre-loaded w/ Linux, but it's Caldera...ick. Check out the keyboard light, that one feature is worth the price of admission.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Best freakin laptop I've ever used. Great keyboard. Great screen. Great size. Not too heavy. I love this thing and it runs Linux really well.
I don't use the winmodem, as I generally don't use a modem at all. If it came down to it though, I'd get a PCMCIA modem before I'd give up my T20.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
I have a Fujitsu B-2130 that is 1.5 years old. It's a beautiful, well made, and tiny machine. It has no internal CD/DVD/floppy drives, and the processor is only a celeron. But it has a touchscreen interface, which has made all of its (minor) shortcomings seem irrelevant. Considering I use the laptop mainly for holding digital pics, music, and (802.11b) surfing, the touchscreen is OUTSTANDING. Surfing on the couch with the machine in my lap is actually comfortable, and being able to hit the transport buttons in winamp with my finger is wonderful! I will never buy a laptop without a touchscreen again.
So I can't watch DVD's with my laptop, big deal. The new version of the B series has a PIII, anyway. I can't wait until it's time to upgrade!
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
Well, I have a Compal N20U. Details about it, and how to set up Linux on it can be found here.
Big wins: Light & light (read: sexy ;), dockable, Internal WinModem & Ethernet work with linux.
My primary concern was this:
I'm a student - therefore, I am poor, and will continue to do so for the foreseable future. In a few years, my laptop will be obsolete. So, it's better to have a light, obsolete laptop, than a big honking one.
I also tend to like ultrabase/mediabase/whatever you want to call it. Think IBM X-Series, or Sony Z505's. You can have your nice, thin, laptop, or you can have a big-ass laptop with all the drives.
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
P100 toshiba laptop with a 1.1 gig drive, 40 megs ram, and an 11.3 inch TFT. Runs linux very well; this was the machine i installed linux on for the first time, and it worked like a charm! The PCMCIA modem simplified the process of getting on the net for the first time. I didn't have any of the typical newbie problems dealing with winmodems.
I highly recommend the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 series. They have P3 clockspeeds in the upwards of 900mhz and seem to get better and better with every new cpu upgrade. Our company has been using them since the 4200 series and have been pleased throughly with not only their performance, but dependability. We have compared these with the Tecra series (Which we also use) and the performance is far surpassing when you consider the series is supposed to cater to the "working" class. Tecra's seem to have more modem and bios issues when compared to SP's. Another great thing about the 4600 series is that they're all inclusive. No bulky dongles or port replicators (Like the portege...bleck). I know the question wasn't pertaining to work machine, but these variables can easily be translated to home use.
www.sagernotebooks.com provides excelent notebooks for the cost, and I highly recommend checking them out!
I used to have one of the 7-lb monsters. Even though that doesn't sound like much, it was enough of a pain to lug it around that I usually didn't bother.
My 2.75 lb 0.78" thick 1024x768 LCD 505TX, on the other hand, goes everywhere. I even take it on 4-day backpack trips (so I can download camera pictures and save GPS tracklogs.) There is no way I'd get one of those big and clunky laptops again.
I picked up this Toshiba about 2 1/2 months ago, and it has worked great with linux. Its a nice thin laptop too.
For $1200 (almost 3 months ago.. price has prolly dropped) I got a 700Mhz Celeron, 64M ram (I added another 128M for $50), 13.3 Active TFT 1024x768 (really crisp), DVD, built in modem (haven't tried it out in linux -- use my pcmcia ethernet).
The only problem I have had is with sound. I haven't found good support under linux for the cs4281. Upping my kernel to 2.4.3-12 helped.. but mp3s skip a lot. The OSS drivers work perfectly, but I refuse to drop them cash ($45!) because I'm too lazy to fix things myself. Anyone have this soundcard working well on a laptop?
...answer: whichever fits your needs.
Here is a unit that comes in at 4.3 LBS, and is Linux Compatible. Great Guys to deal with as well.
http://www.qlitech.net/products/laptops/king.html
"Fortune, Fame, Mirror Vain, Gone Insane..... But The Memory Remains...
...is the kind that costs $50 at Cheetah's Totally Nude.
I got mine about a year ago - 1400x1050x32bit (SXGA+) resolution (although DVD playback only supports 24bit) - it's got a great pair of built-in speakers, 18 GB hard drive. It's a PIII 600 with 90 MBs of RAM with a dual-boot setup between Win98 and Mandrake 7. I only had to tweak a couple of files in order to get mandrake to install and use the full rez of the LCD screen. It's also got s-video out so with a pair of Monster (tm) cables I picked up for about $30, I can play DVDs on any TV, just about anywhere I go. The two deciding factors for me was the 1400x1050 resolution and Dell's premiere service and support. - I just wish I had waited a couple of months and gotten the UXGA+ when it came out.
I really like my i8k. It was only $2200 for 900MHz + dvd/cdrom + builting ethernet + modem + etra battery. And best of all, it has 1600x1200. The Equivelent IBM was almost $4k.
Of course, if you want to have a small, light machine, you are better off with one of the new Librettos...
I love my IBM, but the Thinkpads never have enough video memory. My next one will be something like the Dell 8000.
Embrace the wrevolution!
Things to consider when buying a laptop:
1. If you want to play (3D) games, make sure that you have a GeForce 2 Go chipset. It's the only one that allows you to play newer games at decent framerates
2. For Linux you should check whether your built-in modem is supported
3. Integrated WaveLan/WiFi is a cool feature if you know other people who have it, much better than an external PCMCIA card
4. If you want to use external drives (CD burner, faster harddisks (Laptops harddisks are slooow)), make sure you have a FireWire/iLink/ieee1394 port
5. built-in ethernet is always a useful feature
I say go with the Dell Latitude. My last two employers both made the switch to Dell Latitudes, and they are by far the best, IMHO. My last employer was previously an IBM Thinkpad shop, and we had nothing but problems - ever try to get serial, parallel, and infrared all working on a TP600 under NT? DON'T. Just burn the damn thing. The machines are a little better with Win2K, but they are still far from perfect (install Win2K on a TP 390. I dare you...).
You can do a fresh install of NT or 2K on a latitude, load up the correct drivers, and you're off and running - with Thinkpads you had to install the TP utility (it's bundled with Win2K but still barely works) and then spend FOREVER tweaking the resources to get everything to play happy.
However, if price is an issue, the Latitudes do come at a premium... they are geared for the corporate world, so they are on the pricey side. I had a Lat C600 with a PIII 750, 256MB, 10GB, and built in NIC/modem, and it cost roughly 3 grand when brand new (>6 months ago). However, Redhat 6.2 and 7.x ran flawlessly on the machine - once the 2.4 kernel came out, I didn't need to install drivers for anything on the box (unlike NT and 2K). Plus, the head of the Latitude design team previously worked on Apple's PowerBooks, so you know that they're gonna be more sexy than most other laptops, save the VAIO.
You could go with a Dell Inspiron instead, as they are cheaper, and generally have more bells and whistles than the Latitudes (I believe you can get them with Geforce video), but in my experience they just aren't as stable as the Latitude.
The CS4281 driver, in every Linux kernel since 2.2.18 or so, still doens't seem to work reliably. Sound support just "disappears" for no reason after a while, if it starts up at all.
And I don't work for these guys nor do I have any financial interest in promoting them.
Mod me down, but this "story" is crap.
Yet another "newbie" question just like Are High-End CPUs Worth The Money?
Come on folks. We're technical people. Do your own research and stop wasting our time.
Yes, AGP is better than PCI (No Shit?)
Yes, DVD is better than a plain old CD-ROM (DUH!)
-In England, the police don't have a gun and you don't have a gun, so if you commit a crime "Stop!...or I'll say stop again." - Robin Williams
I'm running OS X on my older iBook. 10.0.4 runs well even with the 300 mHz G3. I wish I had Firewire and another USB port. The new iBooks will be monsters. They're affordable, reasonably fast, and well-made. Run OS X or Yellow Dog/Linux PPC. And away you go.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I have an IBM TP 240. Very light little machine that has an "ugh" lucent winmodem, USB, up to 20GB hard drive and 192MB RAM and a single pcmcia slot. If you wanna CD, its external only. PCMCIA cd's "could" be a tremendous pain to instal LINUX on (at least for me, a relative GNUbie), but SuSE 7.2 was easy. The bootdisk found my targus PCMCIA cdrom no problem. At one point I reinstalled via NFS. Suse bootdisk and module disks found my netgear pcmcia nic and flawlessly connected to my desktop exorting the suse dvd via NFS. Voila, a full color Yast2 linux install. Aside from the modem, I found that X 4.n made the machine freeze. But if you boot to CLI and run "sax" the SuSE X 3.n configurator, then everything works great at 800x600 16bit. KDE 2.1x. 240's are't in production, but you can find them pretty cheap n the net.
i love my new asus S8600 laptop, although it's a little more (~1600) it's not too fast, has a low maximum amount of memor (192MB), and a small disk (10GB), but it travels really well, costs half of what most notebooks in it's weight class (3.9lbs) do, and many complete stragers will talk to you if you get the yellow one. it even comes with *two* very stylish cases, one is clear rubber(!), the other a pleather case that's as trim as it is, and hundreds of times more stylish than any of those big bulky ugly ones you find everywhere. and it has all the essentials onboard 10/100 connection, IR, 2 USB ports, glidepad, modem. only downside is a weird proprietary port for the external CD (DVD and CDR are options) I've been travelling around europe and it's perfect for this sort of thing, though by no means in the IBM class but hey, compare 3-5k to 1.6k, you know? check it out: http://notebook.asus.com/s8series1.asp oh, yeah -- caveat emptor: comes with winME installed(!) yick. i put win2k on and it's fine, but haven't tried linux. will as soon as i'm done traveling.
The new iBook is far more exciting than any of the current ThinkPads. I'm a fan of ThinkPads, sturdy, wonderful design, really solid. However, the iBook has taken over my world what with OSX/BSD, VirtualPC, Linux for PowerPC and iTunes to sooth me while I work. The price cannot be beat. All this without touching an Apple for over 5 years now.
Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have? - Buckminster Fuller
Well I'd say the same two, I used to be a die-hard fan of bulky and beefy PCs but now I've my second Dell laptop and love it. Dells are usually a bit pricy but they are loaded with equipment and luxuries, the best one being the gorgeous screens they put on. Just the 1400x1050 or 1600x1200 TFT screens are worth the price by themselves. As for the model, I tend to favor the big Insipron 8000, I never use my laptop in train or plane so battery life and weight are not an issue, and I'm more than ready to give up on those to get more power and larger screen :)
Also the support is good - make sure to get a 3 year warranty because under daily use those things tend to wear down and you just can't replace the keyboard for 10 $ like with a desktop PC.
I've been very happy with my A22m (900 MHz, 512 MB, 20 gig drive, DVD and 15", 1400x1050 screen). I was a little worried about the resolution being too small, but with some font tweaking (already done for you by IBM in the Windows preload), everything is very readable and the extra real estate is wonderful. IBM did a very nice job on the screen support - none of the flex and associated pressure-point distortion I've seen in some 15" screens. LinuxCare has certification and their install instructions up for Suse, RedHat, etc., at: http://www.linuxcare.com/labs/certs/ibm/thinkpad/a 22m/pada22m.epl
As rho mentioned in his excellent post, a lot depends on how you want to use your laptop. But there's even more to it than that.
For example, untll very recently, I've had a tough time finding a laptop with the right combination of a big keyboard, a useful pointing device, a crisp screen, and Firewire capability.
Those things happen to be important to me, but to someone else, the equasion might be: big-ass hard drive, super light weight, a blistering fast CPU, and dual PC card capability.
If you're really going to *use* your laptop, rather than just have it for bonus geek point value, figure out what the most important elements are for your particular needs, then research accordingly.
No matter what anyone says, there's still no flat-out world-dominating laptop out there, since all laptops have to compromise one factor or another. It's just a matter of which compromises you mind less than others.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I know, Dell isn't on a lot of people's "Hot" list since they took Linux off as one of the configuration options but they really do have some sweet deals going on right now. Last month, I bought a Dell Inspiron "Thin and Light" (and they really are pretty thin and light ;-)), 128 megs of RAM, 30 gig HD, DVDROM plus a wireless hub and card from them all to the tune of about $1600. Without the wireless jazz it was about $1300, so they have some reasonable deals and a decent payment plan option for all of us poor college student geeks that need new hardware. ;-)
So if you're looking for an affordable laptop, I'd go with Dell.
with a huge screen. I like my apple pismo(firewire) laptop. Tho, I have to admit some of the newer laptops, both mac and pc are cool looking.
It had problems but thanks to APple protection Plan..its all smiles especially with X on it. I love my unix/mac.
c.
oh look, its a multiphasic chronoton particle generator, with optional dual airbags and a heizenberg buffer modulator!
"Hi, I'm too fucking lazy to do my own needs assement and product research, so I'm hoping somebody will tell me what to do, so when I decide I don't like it, I can blame somebody else." gets posted, but the title of the next Star Wars movie gets rejected. But I'm sure somebody else will submit it, and a different /. editor will post it.
But I'm not bitter.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Don't forget QLITech Linux Computers, they bought out Tuxtops a few months back (methinks)
QLITech Linux Computers
Very slick hardware, and their prices aren't bad at all. Nice guys to deal with too.
"Fortune, Fame, Mirror Vain, Gone Insane..... But The Memory Remains...
The new apple iBooks are really, really nice pieces of hardware, particularly for the money, and they run Yellow Dog beautifully. See this slashdot article for more info.
I keep telling people about them and they say: "But this Toshiba goes to 11."
Yeah, and you can edit digital video on the road with this one, and it does everything that that Toshiba does.
"But this one goes to 11."
I administer a mixed office of macs, linux boxen and windows machines, and feel that all three machines have their place, it just seems sometimes that people don't give apple's hardware its due. Whatever else is wrong with them (and there's plenty, of which I'm sure I will be reminded in the posts that follow this one up) they do make really, really good hardware, and it's not as expensive as everybody thinks that it is. Go configure an iBook at the apple store, then configure a notebook from any other manufacturer to the same specs (if you can) and look at the price. I'd be surprised if there's $100 difference either way. And between OS X and Yellow Dog, there are plenty of configuration options.
Don't take me for a mac zealot, I just hate it when people either (a dismiss apple just 'cause their apple, or, (b make an uninformed or prejudicial decision for any reason. Apple certainly has their shortcomings, and I am not blind to them, they often seem to forget that good design is: "form plus function, followed by meaning." But don't let that discourage you from looking.
I recently bought a Sharp PC-AR10. Sharp are pretty low-profile over here as far as laptops go, although they're quite big in the Far East. This model has a fantastic 14" screen (Sharp's TFT screens are some of the best - other manufacturers tend to buy theirs from them in fact), PIII-650, 10GB HDD, 64MB RAM, FireWire(!) and a built in CD-RW drive. This machine was being flogged for a ridiculous price here in the UK recently, so I grabbed one. I'm very satisfied so far - it doesn't have the high-end 3D graphics that the Dell Inspiron 8000 has, but it is just fine for me (and it plays Quake III Arena perfectly :)
Just my 2 pence's worth...
Watch out for the Apple service. they are the loosers in the industry. We fix apple's where I work, and they are the absolute worst. The best thing about them is that you can send them back to apple for little cost and get them fixed within a week if something goes wrong (if you call this a good thing). If you have an apple authorized service center near you, then it is a little easier.
The main thing to watch out for is the 1 year warranty. Out of everyone i have ever known to own the Black keyboard Powerbook G3 (aka wallstreet) they have all had major repairs done to them. The worse thing is that the inverter board goes bad, and you have to pay apple $328.00 flat fee for any repairs. apple doesn't allow ASP's to work on their laptops anymore, so any time it breaks, this ~$330 fee applies (if its not covered on warranty).
Trust me, get the 3 year plan. it will save your day when(not IF) your laptop goes bad. Remember, this is the first model that has come out of that new style, and every single laptop apple has ever made that is the first of anything ended up being a POS (even the origional iMac is a POS)
good luck, and get the warranty, itl make you glad in about a year or 2.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
I have a Dell I7000 that works great, to bad I can't get the back lighting to turn off when the screen blanks :( Anyone have any ideas on that???
First, you may as well go for something good since they're a bitch to upgrade. I would go 800+ Mhz, 128 RAM, 20Gb HDD and a DVD or DVD/CDRW (portable CD burner should be very handy when you need to jack your friends MP3s). Expect integrated ethernet/modem since PC cards are a pain and big expensive. (uhh.. and don't bother with ricochet service....)
Keyboards make a big difference. I think the best I have felt is Compaq's. I think the Vaio's are probably the worst. Gateways are also good, Dells and Toshibas are ok.
I like the Compaq Presario 1200s (Athlon4). The 1700s (sucky PIII) are nice and they have a some nice discounts for some configs right now. All use Rage Mobility video though :(.
Gateway2000s are rediculously overpriced as are Vaios. Dell's look pretty sweet too, but I don't want a laptop I havent actually seen or touched.
And thats my $1/50 worth...
Processors are fast enpough. My laptop (work's) is a PII, and is plenty fast. The battery will go 8.5 hours, which means I have to shut it down over lunch. Just a thinkpad 390.
The small screen is my biggest issue. 800x600 doesn't cut it. I run 1600x1200 whenever I can. this is made worse by some programs I run requiring a bigger screen.
wireless network is not an option. If you have a laptop and don't have wireless networking you are missing out. If you are a corporation you are penny wise and pund foolish. Wireless allows me to be productive nearly anywhere. I can attend class and fix bigs at the same time. (some classes anyway). I can attend a meeting and while someone else is giving status I can work. When I'm giving status and the boss has a detailed question I can look up the detailed answer. When my compiles fail I know now. There are security implications with wireless, but they should be overcome, not used as an excuse to not have it. Trust me, once you go wireless you won't touch a wire again.
Tough is important too. A laptop that is never droped belongs to someone who should just get a desktop since it isn't leaving his desk anyway. There is no way to use a laptop like they are ment to be used without dropping them by accident once in a while.
I have an older ThinkPad X390 dual-booting SuSE 7.1 and Mackersoft Wenders 2000. It's the most reliable laptop I've ever owned.
I also have a PowerBook G3/400 (Pismo) that bomb-restarts a lot, but OS X should fix that.
Wait until OS X 10.1 comes out in September, buy a little iBook for $1300, and get your Unix fix that way.
I've had a number of laptops, all of varying degrees of performance, depending on what my employer thought I needed (or had available).
;-) And something happened to the sound drivers when the SysOps upgraded it to Win2K SP2. (Don't flame me, it's company policy to use Win2K even though it makes an expensive X-Term.)
I started with a Toshiba model several years ago, which was decent at the time (when it was one of the few NT approved laptops), but quite heavy, and slow by modern comparison.
Last summer I moved into a HP Omnibook 9000, which was really pretty sweet, but it tended to run hot if I left dnetc running all the time. (Not a problem if you put it on a desk/table, but when you unhook it from you monitor, keyboard, etc, and plop it on your lap, it can be a bit uncomfortable.) My only complaint about this one was that the disk was a touch small, and the default partitioning was really poorly laid out.
Since then I've switched companies, and I'm living in a Gateway Solo Pro 9300. A decent machine, but I can max out the memory on it pretty easily. The DVD player is entertaining, but I haven't had any real "business" use for it yet.
i finally ditched the mac install for a YellowDog Linux setup, and i am much happier. i boot MacOnLinux in a little window which still impresses me. if you change the desktop resolution inside the mac os, it actually resizes the little window! freaking rad.
i think it's cool when people see the mac and expect some schmuck playing with Hypercard or something, and instead i'm coding something and running Enlightenment.
if you can get your employer to spring for it, i highly recommend it.
muerte
Most of any laptop's cost is in the screen. Stick with 800x600 and laptops become cheaper, even more so with passive LCD displays. Remember, no laptop will match your desktop system and that you're not buying it for games.
All I want to be able to do is code C and compile. Heck, I'm not even going to insist on being able to run X!
What works for that?
What's this Submit thingy do?
I'll have to agree. While it may not be the most powerful computer, I love my Libretto 50CT. I'm dual booting windows 98 and Debian at the moment and it's a nice little machine. Granted you'll want to run a smaller window manager like WindowMaker, but it's nice having a little pocket laptop to hook into a network and do what you need to do. I've used it as a temporary DHCP server and firewall when the need arose, among various other things.
The only problem with it is the battery life, but you can get plans on the net (at http://www.fixup.net) to build a 4 or 8 hour external battery. My next laptop will definitely have to be this small... it takes a bit to get used to the small keyboard, but the nub mouse on the side beats any touchpad or IBM nub that I've tried.
Toshiba laptops work very well with both linux and *BSD. Johnathan Buzzard wrote the Toshiba Linux utilities... http://www.buzzard.org.uk/toshiba/index.html These were ported to NetBSD, so the Toshiba tops work pretty much flawlessly. I am using a 4 year old Toshiba Tecra 500CS and everything(modem[it is not a winmodem...], sound, IR, PCMCIA, display, apm, can suspend in linux, fan turns on/off using fan program...) works in linux and most everything(modem, shitty sound[8bit only], PCMCIA, display, apm, fan program) worked in netbsd. They are a great choice for those looking to purchase laptops...
I bought myself an Acer Travelmate 521TE for christmas last year (cost $2700 Cdn = $1800 USD back then), and I have absolutely no complaints so far. Builtin ethernet, 600MHz P3, 1024x768 display, 4 hour battery life, and it is quite light as well (4lbs I think?).
It doesn't have toys like DVD or CD-RW drives, but let's face it, how often do you watch DVDs on your laptop anyway?
PS almost forgot, the 64MB RAM it came with was a bit low, but with memory prices as they are now it is very easy to upgrade that.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Linux installed with no problem, works with everything except the modem with Red Hat 7.1 out of the box. Dell even had RPMs for the graphics adapter to get it to run at 1600x1200 with minimal user input. Don't know if they still have that now, given that they dropped support for the desktops.
Looking back, I'd probably go for the Inspiron 4000 series instead since that's smaller slightly lighter.
Vote Libertarian!
Keep Austin Weird!
The IBM PS2 lunchbox was the best machine ever, although it needed a normal outlet the black and orange screen will make love to you all night long.
I'm using a Portege 660CDT, works great under Linux and even under Winblows. I bought it refurb'd for $150, and I love it.. it's fast for it's time, it's durable, and it's small!
- Turq - "That's TRON, he fights for the users."
Toshiba 2805-402S notebook. It comes with
-850MHz PIII
-128MB RAM
-20GB HD
-DVD/CD-RW combo drive
-56k modem
-10/100 ethernet
and more for about $2100.
That's pretty damn decent!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Get whatever you buy insured. And if you happen to buy it from Circuit City tell them to shove thier extended warranty up thier... BTW>If other laptop users have had bad experiences with CC and extended warranties please email me (see URL above).
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
I have been reading Slashdot anonymously for about a year. I recently made an account and submitted a few Ask Slashdot questions, everything from how much should I sell my domain name for to which OS works best on a laptop. All were rejected. Ok, no big deal. But today I see this, and I think to myself "Gee, didn't I submit this exact same Ask Slashdot and it was rejected?" I guess because I haven't hit the karma cap that my questions don't matter. Oh well.
It has the best keyboard I have used on a laptop. the touchpad is pretty good too.
photosMy Photostream
Simply the best you can get, right now.
I know, it's not Intel architecture - that's just fine. Cram it full of RAM (1Gig) and fire up a few Virtual PC windows.
It's extremely well made - except for the hinges, which flake paint after a while, but you can just brush that off and it looks fine.
Definitely a well-made piece of gear. Mac OS X runs great on it, too!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
the powerbook g3's and all those that look like them use a special hinge the apple seems to amke difficult for people to aquire. it also wears out and breaks severing the display from the laptop. Don't ever buy a used one for regular use I have heard the problems on news groups and have seen my friends go down like that. very short lived
My biggest suggestion to you would be not to underestimate the importance of size and weight. I'm on my second laptop now, and I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. My first laptop was your standard sized laptop, a Hitachi Visionbook Pro, which had good power-wise specs for the time, and was only of average size and weight, because I completely blew off the importance of these factors. I thought to myself, p-shaw all the laptop owners who complain about how heavy their computers are and don't actually carry them with them to places are trippin', it's only 5-7 pounds we're talking about here for heaven sakes. But 5-7 pounds gets surprisingly annoying when you have to carry it around with you whenever you go anywhere where you'll need it, especially with all the support equipment (power, carrying-case, batteries, etc.). That computer got stolen, and now after having owned a laptop, and wanting to buy a new one, I made a more informed choice and purchased a Sony Vaio super slim model, and I could not be happier with my choice.
I think you'll find there's an exponential return between the size of the computer you choose and how willing you are to take it with you to places where it'd help. With a PDA you'll probably be willing to carry it with you everywhere you go, just in case. With a superslim style computer, you'll probably be willing to carry it with you whenever you have good reason to believe that you'll need it. With some monster oversized 15" screen desktop replacement laptop, you'll probably find that that's exactly what you bought - a replacement for your desktop. And that's all well and good, but most people who are thinking about buying laptops do so with the expectation that they will be using the computer on the go, not just buying a small desktop with poor expansion options.
These days, every damn computer has so much power and video speed and such. I would suggest that these factors can be minimized unless you absolutely, positively need to play games or do something else very video/cpu intensive on your system. For what you need on the run (word processing, internet, mp3s maybe, etc.) it's important to keep in mind that you're not buying a desktop, and not to think like you are. So realize what you need and buy with those in mind. Every laptop will fulfill what you need from it application wise, so try and maximize the other laptop-specific attributes, such as battery life, size/weight, storage space and screen. I'd even go so far as to suggest that these days almost every laptop has a pretty decent screen, so you probably don't need to worry about that too much, but I haven't owned one of those laptops with a truly huge (14"+) screen yet, so this is just speculation.
As far as price is concerned, I would suggest that around ~1300-1500 is the sweet spot these days for slim computers. But if you absolutely, positively, need to have it be bargain basement priced, you might want to consider going used.
If it has to be new, I don't know about other manufacturers, but Sony has a pretty decent super tiny laptop for 999 here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/sr/index.html
and a monster screen
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html
I'm running a Dell inspiron 8000 myself... Great for Diablo 2 and such. *What a reason to buy a laptop*
:)
Anyhow I like it a lot. P3 700, 192 megs of mem, burner, 2 batteries, big screen, 20 gig drive, and a 32 meg ati graphics card.
I do have some problems though. The pointer stick in the middle has got to go. That thing is a total waste, especially after as it gets older and ya tilt the laptop and it grabs the pointer on the screen because it's not working right. Nasty problem, Dell's solution is not to have a bios switch to turn off the pointer stick, but Windows software to turn it off *Sucks big time.*
So if anyone knows of a Linux utility that can kill pointer sticks on laptops, especially ones like mine, let me know. I have a copy of Mandrake 8 that's itching to get on their.
*And keep a small windows partition for Diablo 2* *Waves cash at Loki to have a diablo 2 port to linux* God I'm a sad case.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
What this means to you:
- Cheaper Laptops
- Local Computer Dealers Selling Their Own Line of Laptops (based on the ASUS,KDS base models)
- Laptops WILL bump out desktops for the mid-low, mid markets
- Desktops WILL be around for a while yet, as the ultra-cheapies (family room PCs *for the Youngins*) and high-end (power hungry video cards, huge fast hard drives that are needed for video editing, CAD design, game playing, music archiving, etc.)
Check the notebook listing on pricewatch for ASUS and KDS models. Should see a lot more activity (maybe new suppliers) in the not to distant future.Not to be a "me too", but I totally agree. Actually, I look at it like this ...
When it comes to desktops, for price-performance, it's hard to beat PCs. After all, $1000 (US) can get you a hell of a machine, and as much as I love those G4 towers, they don't compete very well.
However, when it comes to laptops, where else can you get USB, Firewire, ethernet, modem, a 15" screen, a decent amount of memory, a DVD player and a fast little processor all for about $2500 (US)? Now, if you want an inexpensive (ca. $1000) or high end (more than $3500) model, then go with a PC, since there aren't many Apple offerings in those realms. Besides, the MacOS is cool in that hooking up an external monitor to your laptop gives you an extra screen/desktop (not just a mirror of your current desktop).
In any case, if one is a hard-core PC zealot, then feel free to disregard this post.
--SK
Regnant populi. (The people rule.) Pregnant ropuli. (The snake will soon lay eggs.)
the current iBook from Apple is what I'd get.
about 5 lb, 1024x768 screen, 128 MB RAM (almost enough, and upgrades easily), 10GB disk, 2 USB ports, FireWire (aka iLink or IEEE 1394), 10/100 Ethernet, DVD-ROM drive, tv-out, rgb-monitor-out. $1500
Most importantly, it's built very solidly. Wrap it in a t-shirt if you want to keep it from getting scratched, otherwise it will do just fine in a backpack or other light luggage.
Con: 3d acceleration is a little weak. Rage 128 mobility IIRC. Still better than software-render and enough for all but 'serious' gamers.
More disk would be nice, but I just wirelessly net-mount my mp3's off my G4-450 and all is good. The wireless is good. Very good. (and cheaper than Lucent/Orinoco cards)
Start Running Better Polls
I myself use PowerBook G4, mostly because of my eyes - it's the only laptop I could use about 8hr straight. I do mostly coding on it, sometimes read a book or watch a movie. For games you'll probably need something else. Consider the following:
* Battery - Crusoe is the best, but relatively expensive, and it might be slower. One of Apple laptops or Sony should be fine.
* Support - laptops are hard to fix, you probably need that. AppleCare is the best one I've seen, IBM was pretty good too. Dell refused to fix my old laptop - your mileage might vary.
* Drivers/software - if you have to have applications that are Intel-specific, well, no Powerbook for you, sorry. Other than that, LinuxPPC had no problem detecting any hardware on my laptop. Mandrake 7.0 worked quite well on Dell Inspiron 3800.
* Options - one thing Dell does well is that there are many configuration options. You could change LS120 floppy to battery, etc.
* Price - well, look it up
* Female attractivenes - www.apple.com/powerbook/
Again, think what you would use your laptop for.
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
(Other than a Mac iBook, which I realize is an option.)
My ideal laptop would be a cheap, lightweight x86 laptop, on which I would install Linux myself. Becuase I won't be running Windows on this machine, I really do *not* want Microsoft getting a kickback for my purchase of it.
I've figured out how to buy naked desktop machines, without a pre-installed Windows bought and paid for that I'm going to erase. That's quite easy. But what place will sell me a laptop without selling me Windows? I guess that Dell used to do this, but does anybody any more?
(And, I don't want them just to pre-erase Windows for me. I really want this not to count as a Windows sale and not feed back any $$$ to Microsoft. As an anecdote, some four years ago we were looking for quotes on systems from various different vendors. We were going to run Linux on these machines. We called a local CompUSA (I think it was), who at first told us that they couldn't sell us a machine without Windows on it. Later they called back to relent. But, the quote they then sent us was *identical* in price to the previous quote... it just didn't list an OS at all. I'm pretty sure what was happening there was that we were effectively paying for Windows, but they were going to do us the "service" of pre-deleting it, and they weren't telling us we were buying Windows.)
-Rob
First, as a Mac user, you can kiss the sub-1k$ range goodbye, unless you're willing to snag something older and a hell of a lot heavier.
:D )
I want the following features in a laptop- from most important to optional:
1. Weight. If it weighs as my Powerbook 180, forget it. Four, five pounds- tops.
2. Battery life. Lithium Ion batteries whup the llammas ass- four hours of "office" use, two hours of Quake III / Photoshop / Internet use, maybe an hour on the DVD player.
3. Modem AND Ethernet. All or nothing- I dump downloads onto a server on my home LAN and a crossover cable is far more useable than IRDA or lugging a zip drive.
4. Battery CAPACITY. My Pismo powerbook can ditch the DVD/CD drive module in favor of a second battery, if and when I need it. This has saved my ass many, many times! (forget the TiBook- and don't get me started on slot-loading drives in portables)
5. A responsive, reliable keyboard. Something that I can pick apart and clean if I need to. (the Pismo is a nightmare from this respect, but Apple seems to be sticking with the "wishbone suspension" on their portable keyboards....)
6. Any sort of Video Out. (fortunately, the pismo runs S-video and VGA out.
7. Audio out.
8. Millions of colors @ 1024x768. Bigger is better, but this usually means that the *case* gets bulkier, and who needs that?
9. Accessability. Upgrading laptops is a nightmare, and not recommended for amateurs.
Fortunately, one can run MacOS X or Classic MacOS on a Pismo, and I have a friend who's running DebianPPC on his Lombard (one model lower). Linux PPC installs, as does MKLinux.
My opinion? You want a Pismo or a Lombard powerbook. The only *real* differences between the two are that the Lombard has SCSI and the Pismo comes with Firewire and is slightly faster.
A quick features list:
14.5" LCD @ 1024x768, millions
VGA out, supports some wicked high resolutions as a second monitor
S-Video out, treated same as VGA.
2 USB ports
2 Firewire ports
Audio out
Audio in
Ethernet (10/100)
Modem (56k)
Expansion module comes with CD or CD/DVD drive, they make burner modules. And the expansion module can swallow a second battery.
All the way. This machine is the handiest machine I've ever had. I used to have a high end 1400x1050 laptop. 1 Ghz processor 384 MB ram, 32GB hard drive, and 16 MB video card. Pretty sweet machine, but useless for portability. But THIS machine, oh man, can you say 10 HOURS of battery life. And it fits in a FANNY PACK! Maybe a little bit slower, but it's NOT noticable. Highly recommended.
One that seems to always be overlooked when it comes to laptops... Modularity.
I've possessed (through work) 2 laptops... in both cases some minor component broke (keyboard, power jack), and we had to send the laptop back to the OEM to have it fixed. This is unacceptable and why I currently do not have a laptop.
Why can't someone make a laptop that I can swap out keyboards easily, or screens, or whatever.
Personally I'm more hopeful that the mini-computers (like the Pocket ePC's) will eventually allow for portable usage. With a power supply, a screen, a keyboard with a nice rigid (to support the screen) carrying case. That's my dream laptop. :)
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
Is there any laptop I can buy without paying the "MS tax"? The used alternative sounds good not only for cost reasons but because I can get one without paying the MS tax.
I purchased one of these in May. PIII 900, 256MB RAM, 15" XGA, 32MB DDR GF2Go, 20GB HD. Built in Firewire, modem, ethernet, 2 Card slots, SVGA port. It weighed in at ~8lbs and just over US$2700. The only thing I wish the laptops were up to speed on is HD transfer rate. If you are used to ATA100, you can definately tell the difference when you have to drop to ATA33. Quake 3 runs great and looks just as good as my desktop even when I turn up the settings to 1024X768, 32bit color. Diablo II does chug a bit when the top of the Palace in Act II or multiple streams of water in Act III come on the screen.
In linux, no matter what i'm running (emacs, vi, without X, with X, etc...), the battery life is about 25 minutes. I havn't had time to look into this matter, but it's ridiculous :) I assume it's draining battery mostly on hitting the hard drive. The vaio (FX210) otherwise is fine. all the hardware works, atleast all the hardware i use. I havn't played with the modem, cause it also has a builtin ethernet card. which works. sound card worked on install. the monitor is clear. i'm happy with it, i just need to work on the battery issue. i'm still on 2.4.3 i think, maybe more recent kernels have better power management.
I have been very happy with this machine. It's a P3-700, 128MB RAM, 16GB hard drive, 15" 1024x768 screen. Everything in it seems to work flawlessly in Linux, including the winmodem. My only complaint about the machine is the video card, it only has 8MB video RAM.
The newer versions of this system contain up to a 1GHz processor and fingerprint recognition, but the rest of the system remain the same. Since my model doesn't have the biometrics, I have no idea of that will work with Linux, but you never know?
For anyone looking to run Linux on a laptop, I'd recommend a system like this one, that is if the video card has enough memory for you.
FYI, I just setup a new Gateway laptop for the Veep of my division, and discovered (and showed to the boss) that you can set the laptop up to use Just VGA, Just CRT, Both VGA and CRT with the same desktop, or VGA and CRT in a dual-head setup. He still prefers the single screen, of course, but for the power-user at home, that could be a decent productivity boost.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
ive owned my pismo powerbook for about a year now and am very pleased. 12 inch screen, svideo out, monitor out, built in ethernet (handy), special support for wireless network cards. and now osx is just icing on the cake.
I've had 3 dells up till now... one inspiron 3500, with ati 4 mb graphics and pIII 450... one latitude C400 (??) with a 400 mhz celeron and 2.5 mb neomagic graphics one latitude C600 (current) with pIII 750 and ati 8 meg graphics... None of them had problems, everything worked in linux. Overall, the latitudes made a bit more serious/stable impressions. Especially with the last one, my battery last really long...
Moot Point...
The Apple IIc has a handle for lugging it around...
I'd recommend going for the 13" 1024x768 screen if you'll be using the laptop a lot. Bigger is too expensive and smaller just doesn't give enough real estate. My Linux partition is happy at 3 GB, but if you want to play games in Windows you'll want another 3 GB at least. For the processor, 233 MHz is tolerable for programming and playing Starcraft, but more demanding applications would be much happier at >400 MHz. The touchpad on my NEC is pretty good, but adding a Logitech wheel mouse is much nicer for longer sessions.
AlpineR
-)Is it going to run Linux? then hardware becomes a major concern, though there are many sites that show you how to run Linux on the iBook, but you might not be a Mac Zealot.
-)Do you want DVD support?
-)What speed range? How much RAM?
-)What chip...AMD or Intel?
-)Are you looking for a mobile desktop?
there are plenty more things to consider, but I'd look at Dell, the iBook starting at $1200 is a beautiful machine, and give Toshiba a look see.
This stuff is pretty dependent on your needs and wants, the iBooks are ideal and more for students, but aren't usually compatible with all business machines which are often x86. Look around, compare prices, and look at the common sense article on top-of-the-line computer hardware.
"As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly" Proverbs 26:11
There's nothing worse than getting to a remote location, whipping out your laptop and discovering that you forgot that essential external drive. Get it all built in! I'll gladly carry some extra weight if I don't have to remember all those damned peripherals.
I bought an Inspiron 4000 specifically because it worked well with Linux. I've had Redhat 7.0 and Libranet installed on it and both work great.... I'de recomend this machine to anyone. They are under $1500 too with a 14" monitor... I'm sure prices have dropped since I got mine. The only down side with Dell products are that they are sorta fragile. I'de get an IBM Thinkpad if you got the money for one... They are the best... very sturdy, etc...
I've dropped a Mac laptop (520) from a height of 7' to an asphalt parking lot, and all it did was wake from sleep. Minor cosmetic damage, but nothing that affected the use of the machine. Don't try this with the average laptop.
As far as "cheering for Steve" goes, every product launch for every company in the world is primarily a big cheerleading session. Nothing unusual at Apple's.
Not at all. I tend to think of Apple hardware as the Mitsubishi of computers, not the Zenith.NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I'm using a T21 (courtesy of work), and I am impressed with it. It has a real BIOS (Phoenix BIOS), all the hardware is pretty much supported by Linux, *BSD, etc, and it can handle video games extremely well. Right now Im dual-booting Slackware and Win2k, and on my Win2k side I have Quake3, and I can run Q3 at 1024x768 at 16bpp no problem. :) Oh, did I mention DVD works flawlessly, even under Linux? :)
I just purchased a Micron TransPort GX laptop less than 2 weeks ago. It features a 1ghz CPU, 256mb of RAM and 20gig of HDD. It also came with an 8x DVD and a 3 hour battery. It was purchased on Ubid.com, brand new and a full 1 year manufacturer warranty. The price was closer to $1500 than to what I am used to seeing for a laptop with these specs ($2500+). I am normally a Dell guy when it comes to laptops, but I am not disappointed at all with this setup.
~.Evanrude
I first used a Satellite system in Nicaragua a few years ago and we had Gateways, Dells, Sagers and Toshibas and the only ones we never had to send in were the Toshibas. All the other ones were real finicky about the abuse being dished upon them. We had lots of dust and humidity down there which was a real killer. The one I used had a crack down the backside of the monitor and still never gave me a problem. I am back in America now but still buy Satellite systems for their durability. I had a Vaio provided to me by work and proceeded to loose all my external port flaps and get a crack down front of the screen. Not to mention the fact that I never could get Win2k installed on it properly. The driver support was iffy. I am not nice to my laptop. It gets tossed in my bag which in turn gets slung, thrown, bounced and slid from here to kingdom come in my wanderings every day. The best part, as far as I am concerned, is the money aspect. I just bought a 700Mhz with 64MB Ram and a 8 GB HD from Circuit City about a month ago for $899. You can't beat it with a price like that. Also the pieces and parts are relatively inexpensive ($120 for a battery, $15 for another 64MB memory)
There are two caveats, however.
1. They aren't the lightest laptops I've ever seen (allthough way lighter than the gargantua Dells I saw last week)
2. They aren't the fastest laptops even accounting for it's clock speed. Laptops always seem slow to me and Toshibas just a hair slower.
I am definitly an evangelist but that doesn't blind me to the facts. For my money Toshiba wins, until they start to suck.
Jesus may love you, but I still think you're an asshole -BVB
G4 Titanium 400 with 384 MB of RAM and a dual-boot OS 9.1/10.0.4. Airport, DVD, Firewire, 15.2 inch screen - everything I need in a laptop.
And I have an iBook (Tangerine 300) running just 9.1 and 96MB of RAM. Works well as a sit around and surf machine.
My work got some IBM A21s in, pretty nice for a Windows PC, not sure how well Linux or BSD works on it though.
Whatever laptop you buy, I've always been able to get good RAM, for less, from http://www.crucial.com
On a friend's laptop, the price difference we got was $483 for maxing the RAM out on a laptop. So he bought the RAM from Crucial, and not from the laptop vendor.
Crucial is one wing of Micron Computing, which used to make really nice desktops. Dunno if they still are.
I have never had a Mac do anything but work great. My low-end 6100/60 first generation PowerPC Mac, purchased when they first became available and later upgraded with a 3rd party G3 processor, is still plugging along happily, albeit slowly in this day and age. Well, actually it stopped working once - wouldn't boot - but I found out on the web that this was due to a dead PRAM battery which I replaced myself easily enough. I have a 2000 model iBook purchased earlier this year. I will see how long it lasts, but it is built like a tank and plugs along happily with OS X (and lots of RAM, of course.) I just wish I had one of those new fangled ones.... Steve
--- What?
You should bitch to Apple about that iBook; It seems to have a faulty keyboard.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I have a TuxTop laptop, which I believe is based on Chembook. It's much beefier than my desktop at home, but I got it for school so I could work on programming projects between classes. I know TuxTops is no longer doing laptops, and that they've licensed the line of products to another company (see www.tuxtops.com for more info). Nevertheless, I am very happy with my purchase, and I recently wiped out the original install and replaced it with RH 7.1. It installed perfectly right away, and even auto-configured my cd-rw properly.
One thing that bugged me was I had problems when I plugged a PS/2 external mouse into the provided port marked mouse. The problem was not readily apparent as it would work fine for awhile then start erratic mouse movements then stop working. On reboot it would work fine for awhile then the problems would return. I returned the PC to Future Shop but the technician could offer no solution other than reformatting my hard drive and restore all the programs to their default. There was no help on the Sony web site. I finally called the tech support call center. After several calls, navigating a complex menu, and a long time on hold I was finally informed that I should not be using a PS/2 mouse as it causes the unstable behaviour. The Tech guy recommended buying a USB mouse which in my frustration I did for $40.00.
OK $40 is not alot of money but I was really unhappy that Sony is selling a product with a defective PS/2 port and not providing any warning sticker, info in the manual or on their web tech support site. Keep in mind this problem is not unique to my machine. The tech guy said that this problem is a hold over from the 500 series and the port should not even be on there due to the conflicts!
So, yes you can save some bucks by not buying the latest and greatest model but also be prepared for problems if it seems too good to be true.
That being said, even with the 550 processor, it works ok for what I do(checking email on the road, word processing and portable DVD player in the van for the kids). I would not think of using it for its intended function of editing video as it would take forever.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
The main thing about laptops are the screens. my 7500 bosts 15,5inch with 1600x1200, which make it very nice, not only to use on the road but also as a workstation at home or work. I couldnt bare to stand quinting at a 12inch screen, but this screen is just great, giving a 19inch a run for its money (who needs CRT, btw? ;)
Besides the screen, memory should be the second most important item on your list (leaving out keyboard and overall shineyness to impress your geeky pals). In my baby, i have 256 MB of thumping ram. If you have less, try to get more, but laptop RAM is hard to come by, so get as much as possible when you buy one.
3rd on the list? a good videocard. Most lt's have a crummy 4/8 meg card, enough for software, but we all know we want at least to be able to frag people at the local LAN party. 3D-support highly recommended, check out linux-support first.
DVD is last on my list. This just rocks with a beamer or widescreen tv (you do have svhs-out, do you?). I find myself not really using it much, but its a good show-off feature ;)
Last few ideas: :| ;)
builtin NIC. PCMCIA-cards are okay, but dont take one with a cablethingy. they break too soon (learned that from experience
HD? get one as big as possible. dont whine. my 20gigs are the limit. Think of a reason, and fast. You dont want a laptop as a wordprocessor, you want one to blow all those workstations away...
CPU? dunno. just dont get a Celeron. Those are for wuzzies
And dont buy a laptop for less than $1000. Get a good laptop or dont get one at all. A medicore laptop gets used every once in a while on the road, but a PDA serves this better. And dont get a 12inch screen. trust me...
This sig is intentionally left blank
There are two main reasons that Mac portables fare better against Intel systems than Mac desktops.
The first is that no one's going out and putting together their own laptop from individual parts. Desktop Macs actually compare very favorably to pre-made desktop systems from Dell, Gateway, Sony, etc. It's self-assembled machines that get to be a lot cheaper than any of these, but that's not relevant for laptops.
The other is that whole hardware/software harmony thing. Things like power management and docking behaviour are non-standardized enough that there are great benefits to having the same organization make the hardware and the software. Obviously this only applies if you're running Apple's software, rather than Linux, NetBSD, or OpenBSD.
I recently got a great deal on a generic laptop. The system is probably nothing to really rave about for most
Without rebates, without hassle the machine's total cost ended up being just over 950 dollars brand new. Now, that was about 3 months ago and in that time the market has given birth to some sweet deals on laptop systems. There are many with much larger HDs, more RAM and other great features.
However, the ads that I have seen all show prices of just under 1100 or 1200 and that is after the MSN discount. How many Linux users want to use MSN?
Back to my laptop. Running the latest Red Hat 7.1 the system runs smoothly and is also able to use all the pieces of hardware installed. Everything from the sound to the built-in Modem.
If you would be interested in such a laptop post a reply and I will see about getting the company that I work for to post it up on their web site and then I will send a link here.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Todays kicking, expensive laptop will be junk in 2 years, and depreciate the moment you open the box. For half it's price, you can get a great 6 month old laptop every year.
a d&id=6&list
For example: if you want a good machine on the cheap, I recommend getting a refurbished IBM thinkpad 600x via ebay for about $900. Only 500mhz, but it can handle 576 MB or RAM. Still under warranty. Lots of folks using these for Linux. http://nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=linuxthinkp
Add a DVD for $150, zip for $50, mondo hd for $150 and push the ram up, you have a nice cheap box.
=brian
You need a simple computer.
.Net strategy - namely, pay per use. It costs $10 per computation, or 15 minutes, whichever comes first.
heh. "The Simplest Computer" - sounds like an elementary children's book. "The Little Monitor That Could."
Anyway, here is the simplest computer around, and the interface is perfect because we are all born with it - the interface is human DRIVE. The computer works like this: I stick my pee sprout in your mom's poop chute for 1, and I stick it in her pee hole for 0.
poop chute = 1
pee hole = 0
Sometimes I stick it in her mouth, but that is for parity.
Sometimes complex operations can take a long time to complete, but that's okay! We're looking for simplicity here, not speed. And waiting for this interface isn't that bad.
This simple computer is very susceptable to visuses. In fact, it comes pre-loaded with several.
For review:
poop chute = 1
pee hole = 0
This computer also fits into Microsoft's
poop chute = 1
pee hole = 0
I would never buy an extended warranty for a desktop, but I carry my laptops with me everywhere I go. That is *too* many bumps, slight drops, etc. that the laptops are subjected to. Cables get plugged and unplugged serveral times everyday. Things are going to get knocked loose and little problems are going to pop up. The warranty is going to pay for itself after the first service.
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
I am also currently looking at buying a laptop, and I'm going for one of the 3-3.5 lb. ultralights. Such as a Sony z505 or a Gateway Solo 3450. The only thing they don't have is a built in CD-ROM (the Gateway has it on an expansion slice), but they usually have built in 10/100 ethernet.
For me: XGA resolution, long battery life, as light as possible, built in ethernet. I want something that is very thin and light. I don't need a "road warrior" config.
Some half decent laptops are into the $1500 range, but anything with enough RAM and ethernet is around $2200-$3000.
An Etch-a-Sketch. ;) It really depends on your choices for the above questions. How about something like this instead?
Ahhh, the Holy Grail(TM). eBay has some pretty good deals, but I've heard you need to be even more careful about who you buy from than normal. If you find this one, review it and post it here for us to check out.
Cheers!
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
A month or so ago, I picked up a Compaq LTE Lite/25 with a 200Mb HD, 20MB RAM, and a 9600-baud modem, and Win95; the seller threw in a second full machine (which needs a bit of tinkering to get working), plus an 800Mb HD, for free.
The total cost? A flat CAN$100, or about US$65.
This li'l thing does everything I need a computer to do, with two exceptions: 1. I don't have the right set of solar panels and adapters, so it's still tied to power sockets, and 2. Similarly, I don't have the right adapters to connect the modem to my cell phone, so I have to attach it to a phone outlet to connect to the 'net (my ISP being, of course, the local freenet).
Where can I find a linux driver for the jogdial? I'd love to get that thing working.
I got an Sony vaio XG-29 recently, it's a good machine. Sounds the same as what you described: P3-750, 128MB memory, 18gb hard drive...good weight & sleek build.
eshop.macsales.com usually has great prices on RAM, and now has the proper sticks in stock to let you upgrade to 1GB.
I've got an old libretto... P233 / 6G drive. Not new (got it used), but how can you beat a machine that will run windows + linux (mine is dual-boot) and is the size of a paperback book? (1" x 5" x 7") The keyboard and display (640x280, i think) are small, and everything (floppy, cdrom, port replicator) is external. But there's no better machine for a sysadmin on the go. I administer linux boxes - lots of them. As well as routers. And who wants to carry a 5-7 pound thing around to each site you have to visit? And who has space for a full-size laptop? Not me. This one's about a pound and a half. Used, they're not expensive.
Only catch is installing linux - the floppy is PCMCIA - so no booting off linux from floppies! But linux is like perl - TMTOWTDI (there's more than one way to do it). I actually don't have a cdrom drive for mine, so I dug up a FAQ talking about installing through loadlin. The PCMCIA floppy was my only hitch installing linux - all else was supported. And this was way back with Slackware 4.0!
There's another option if you're just setting up routers though - if you have a PALM, there's a program that will walk you through setting up your router, which you then connect to your palm via hotsync cable + null modem. Not for full setups, but great for getting it on the network so you can finish your config. A little slow, but how else can you configure a router from a machine that fits in your shirt pocket? Picture it - you're in a dark closet, and no laptop. Time to recover that router password (telnet from palms DOES work!) or configure it from scratch ("FigureIt!" I think).
AppleCare is extremely well worth it.
I have an iMac DV. its usb keyboard started doing weird things about four or five months after I got it. (IIRC every key but the space bar worked fine most of the time. the space bar failed to do anything, and sometimes garbage would spontaneously spew.) I took it to a local AASP. they plugged it in, said "Yeah it's broke" and gave me a new one in about 3 days. sure I could've done this without AppleCare, but my AppleCare # simplified things greatly (the guys I had bought it from were a few thousand miles away at the time :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
One vote here for NEC. Mine is a Japanese model (La Vie). It runs linux like a dream with very little tweaking.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
>> I've heard that this driving thing is pretty cool, and everybody agrees that a car is neccessary. Which car should I buy? I just recently bought a Porsche 924S... a very nice car... but just about any Porsche, VW, or Audi would be what i'd recommend.. (yeah... i know i know i know...he's not serious... so what? *LOL*)
These guys took over the TuxTop line and took service to another level.
The Emperor is a portable workstation. My system runs "gears" at 810 fps, runs timedemo demo001 of Q3A at 44fps (IIRC), and my DVD player works just fine (with vlc and xine).
I reviewed this unit for our LUG CedarLUG, and you can view all of the details of this unit there.
Go down to your local PC dealer and freak them out by buying standard RAM and plopping it in your iBook :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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As a coder, I like to view as much code on my screen as possible, (so I have to hold less of it in my, um, imperfect memory). So I highly value 1600x1200 (UXGA) screen resolution, even if the fonts can be a bit small. Programmer productivity is often memory-constrained, if you know what I mean. I knew my next PC should be a notebook, yet I didn't want to "trade down" for a worse-resolution screen when buying it, so I ended up putting off buying a notebook for a couple years.
When I found out a few months ago that Dell and IBM had finally started offering notebooks with 1600x1200 (15 inch) screens, and both of them were also offering built-in CD-RW drives (my choice of successor for the floppy), I decided it was time to upgrade! That and the fact that I wanted my next home PC, which runs both Windows and Linux to be able to run the more-stable Windows 2000 rather than 95/98/ME. And I knew I couldn't procrastinate much longer or I'd end up forced to get Windows XP which i could see I wanted to avoid, due to spyware, bloat, stability-removing "features", etc.
There were just two notebooks that met this criteria: the Dell Inspiron 8000 and IBM's ThinkPad A Series A21/22p. Dell had configurations I wanted between $2000 and $2650, while IBM configs I wanted were $2700 and up, (pretty large price gap!) so I went with Dell. It's a sweet machine for a desktop replacement. NVidia GeForce2 graphics too, etc...
--LPso I've got a Dell Inspiron 4000 that I absolutely LOVE. it cost something like $1800 but came with P3-850/128MB ram/20GB HD/DVD/2 batteries/etc.
the thing that amazed me the most about this notebook is how durable it is. The other day I was programming on it. Things were going great but it looked like it would be a long night so I got off the couch (yeah, I program on the couch while watching TV) and grabbed a cold one out of the fridge. When I got back to the couch I plopped down and the section I was sitting on fell backwards (it's a sectional sofa). About 2/3's of the beer went right through the middle of the notebook. In fact, beer went completely through the keyboard and came out the memory access compartment (directly on the bottom of the machine). I swore about 20 times and quickly removed the batteries. Hoping there was something I could do I went to Dell's site and found instruction on disassembling the machine. The doc had almost anything one could want (how to get the display off, removing the motherboard, CPU covers, etc). Long story short with about a half gallon of distilled water and some time its working perfectly.
-CG
Why not go Apple ?, even the new iBOOK at $1,200 is a bargain. Compare this to a similar laptop and you'd find that the iBook has a ton more geek tech than anything else. Not to mention it's Unix inside. Or if your pocket is deep enough, try their new Titanium Powerbook, very nice choise and certainly priced pretty nicely. I'm going for an iBOOK now, since they look decent now (minus clam-shell design/funky colors), and have a lot more AV stuff than similar laptops (not to mention OS X and co).
The laptop to use is the rare Commodore Computers 486 IBM-compatible.
Word.
I thought alot about this a few months back, and found much similarity in pricing and hardware between HP, Compaq, and Toshiba (retail), with Dell being just a bit more expensive. Long story short, I went with HP. All other things being largely equal, the HP Pavilions had 2 unique features that most others didn't: 1. Built-in composite TV-out (not heavily advertised but definitely present)....Great for presentations or TV-screen gaming 2. Built-in CD controls on the front, with LCD for track. Allows playing CD's without booting up (and wasting power). Great for airplane trips! Anyway, with everything else being equal between the others (screen size, hard drive, mem, price etc.), these 2 minor features stood out for me in a big way. Only Compaq and the hard-to-find-but-impressive Fujitsu Lifebook had the CD controls, but neither had the TV-out. Finally, I found installing Linux on my HP N5250 to be rather painless...and now you have the choice to go with AMD processors (which would have sealed the deal for me even more back then). All this retails around $1200 now.
Having just bought a lovely G4 500 laptop, I can wholeheartedly agree. It's such a joy to work with, I find myself using it more often than either of my desktops. It's fast, slick, and thoroughly enjoyable. I'm also switching most of my development to it, as it now fully supports Java. It's like linux (the joy of a CLI) with a decent modern GUI! (sorry folks, but Xwin just doesn't cut it, no flame intended)
This is the sort of lame fucking question that should be asked on usenet and NOT HERE.
Personally, I don't care for 10 lbs "portables". If I want top of the line power, I buy a desktop. If I want a laptop, I get something small like a Toshiba Libretto.... But I really would love one of those nice new ones with the crusoe chips. Either that or a sony picturebook.
It's almost common practice to buy components separately and build the computer yourself if you want a desktop. Has anyone had any success with building a laptop? I know that the proprietary designs laptop vendors use in order to cram the most things in the smallest space severely limit your choices, but it seems like there should still be standard interfaces and specifications for some components.
For example, I want an AMD system with a NVIDIA Geforce2Go video card. I don't know of any vendor that sells a laptop with both of these components. The NVIDIA card still conforms to AGP 4x, which AMD chipsets support, so it should be possible to buy or scavenge the components separately and Frankenstein something together.
I did find this site, which has some useful information on building your own laptop; maybe it is a good place to start.
By the way, is it possible to call Dell sales and get them to send you a laptop with no memory? Their 2 DIMM 128 MB costs twice as much as a 1 DIMM 256 MB module (yes, even ones designed for laptops) from just about any store. As an added bonus, maybe having no memory would prevent them from preinstalling Windows, Office, various idiotic AOL software, etc.?
- The One God of Smilies =)
"Never put off for tomorrow what can be avoided altogether"
486/33, 4 megs ram, monochrome screen laptop with 200 meg HD and shit all else. Running Debian text only.
Mock me? Go right ahead. It does everything I need. Lovely little thing.
Oh yeah, it's got a fucked up battery too that doesn't hold a charge.
I just got one of the laptops from QLITech and it's a really great system. The support they provide is top quality; call and talk directly to a tech person or email and get a reply right away. As an added plus, they support (and will preload) any of the major distributions.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I have the same problem with my IBM Thinkpad T20, 2.2.19, and the Crystal Audio chipset. 50% of the time it finds it on boot.
So much discussion has gone into what to look for in a laptop and such, but I haven't heard any discussion on the sound cards found in laptops. I have an Inspiron 7500 running RedHat 7.1, and I love this machine for everything except the sound. The screen is beautiful, and everything runs great, but when I hack away I've got a playlist of mp3's I like to keep running to keep my sanity, but with this laptop, and any other I've used for that matter, the sound flat out sucks. Has anyone had any different experiences with sound? Even external speakers don't do much. This alone keeps me from watching dvd's and using it for much of anything except for when I travel. Otherwise though, minus sound, Dell is the way to go, you cant beat the features, and the display, wow.
I have three, and each fills a niche (I prefer using laptops to desktops).
First is my work machine. Its a Gateway Solo 9500, with a P3-850, 384MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. The screen is a 1280x1024, 15.7" LCD that's huge and spectacular. it has a DVD player, and normally sits in a dock that gives it port replication plus an Ethernet card sitting in a PCI slot, plus two additional Cardbus slots. 56K modem and Firewire built-in, too. I run Windows 2000 Pro on it, and the combination of that hardware plus a version of Windows that doesn't completely suck is real sweet. My only complaint is that when I'm using the trackpad the buttons are a little two hard to click.
The Gateway is way too big to carry around all the time - it's more of a desktop computer that folds up for transportation than a laptop. But that's fine for me because I rarely travel with the system. It fits in a Kensington Saddlebag without any problems.
Next I have an old Dell Inspiron 3200 that I mostly keep at home, but it's handy sometimes. It's got 192MB of RAM, an 8GB drive, a 1024x768 13.3" screen, and a P2-266 processor. I run Slackware 8 on it and it makes a nice portable Unix machine (indispensable for diagnostics and the like). The battery's pretty much cycled down, so if I want to use it a lot I need A/C - it isn't worth it to get a replacement battery for it and I can still get about an hour running Slack (as opposed to about 40 minutes under Windows). It's a "hand-me-down" from work that we no longer use. I gave a couple of them to my employees, too.
Then there's what I use at home - an iBook. I just bought the newest one a couple of days ago (I had one of the original toilet seat-looking models before, and other PowerBooks before that), and I must say - Apple does laptops right. For all the crap their desktops get when it comes to price/performance ratios, their laptops are always competitively priced and are just Made The Right Way. Performance is pretty snappy running MacOS 9, a little poky running OS X (usable, but I'm really looking forward to OS X 10.1), and it's way smaller than any of the other ones with a gorgeous screen and the nicest-feeling keyboard of the lot. If only they had a second trackpad button it'd be damn near the perfect notebook.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
If you have the money to spend, and arn't too picky about weight, go for the Dell Inspiron series. I just got a 1600x1400 XVGA, 1 Ghz, 512MB RAM, GeFORCE 2, DVD/CD-RW Combo (1 drive that fits in fixed media bay), Zip drive and Battery (In the two removable media bays), Built in 56K modem and wireless LAN, Does this sound like a laptop?? Also, all the Dell laptops have S-Video ports so you can watch DVDs on your bigscreen, strange thing is...They wont play on Micro$oft windows!!! I can't get DVDs to play on my TV to save my life, the bundled software just plays the sound and displays its logo were the picture should be. My friend is running Redhat 7.1 on his Dell inspiron and he says DVDs output fine to the TV, damn copy protection/Windoze.
http://almostsmart.com
I bought a Sony PCG-F650 a bout a year ago. I've run Mandrake, OpenBSD and Various Debian based distros on it, and everything works perfectly. I get a nice, crisp 1024x768x32 res, and with 650Mhz, it's a good laptop for coding, webstuff and such. Added 128Mb for a total of 196Mb, and I'm running VmWare with WindozeNT4 for [proprietary Cisco] IPSec to connect to work... It's a nice laptop, and I'll recommend it. You can get one for about $1000 (check www.pricewatch.com)...Spare parts are a bit steep in price, tho...
This is just my opinion....I like Dell. They are the only brand of workstation, laptop, or X86 server that I recommend. I've been using a Dell Latitude for a couple years now ,and I've loved it. I just recently decided to upgrade to a Dell Latitude C800. 15.1" screen, 32MB video ram, 512MB system ram, 1Ghz, 20GB HDD, CDRW, DVD...Plus...they run Linux like a champ! I personally wanted a really powerful system, and I wanted it new with a warranty. I'm sure if you look carefully, and are patient, you could get a decent Dell C600 or C800 on eBay for somewhere near $1000.
I'm amazed this hasn't been mentioned yet...
The HP Omnibook 500 is the best if you're looking for a lightweight, relatively powerful subnotebook. Take a look at HP's page to see the details. My 500 has a 700Mhz PIII, 384 MB RAM, and a 20GB HD - yet it only weighs 3.5 lb! The screen is a bit small at only 1024 x 768, but it is much nicer to travel with than my old all-in-one laptop.
Chris Hanson at MIT has put together a set of Debian packages (distributed via ftp, CD images, or bootdisks) specifically for this laptop. It's just about the most brain dead easy installation you'll find for Linux on a laptop. APM, XFree, sound, built-in NIC - everything except the winmodem works right out of the box.
I run a sony vaio with FreeBSD, it's a wonderful thing
Panasonic makes a line of "ruggedized" laptops called ToughBooks. They have shock-mounted drives, flexible mounts between case and MoBo, sealed keyboards (liquid resistant), and a magnesium case. A lot have built-in wireless (CDPD) and a few are built-in their own case. THe 37 is 1" thick, under 5lbs and has a touchscreen.
You will pay a bit more, but that is the price form a more rugged machine...
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
I'm all about being connected no matter where I am. I'm not a big fan of a laptop, but if I can check Slashdot from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, I'm happy. I guess it would have to be one serously beefed up computer to really get my attention. It would have to out perform my current desktop too. If I could get enough NICs in it to make it a portable router, that would be bad ass as well.
I spec'd out a Dell Inspiron 8000 for $3,200. Not too bad I suppose. DVD/CD-RW, 48GB hard drive, and 512mb RAM. Not too shabby.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Have you gotten your modem to work in Linux?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
I just bought a Sony Vaio PCG-505tr off of eBay, and I absolutely love the thing. It only has a Pentium 300 with MMX, but with 128Mb of RAM it runs plenty fast. The size of it is really what kills me. At 10.2"x9"x.9" and a 10.4" XGA monitor that can do 1024x768 (I honestly like my 10.4" LCD better than my 19" CRT) and all under 3 pounds, I can take it anyhere. I bought a power adapter for the car, and with a 6.4Gb hard drive, it makes an excellent portable mp3 player. The only problem with a notebook that small is that most of your drives have to be external. Sony sold the cd-rom separately for $399 (aack!), but you can always share a cdrom drive over a network. External Floppy, port replicator for serial/mouse/keyboard/monitor/printer, but built in firewire and USB =) The keyboard isn't too terribly small, although I always miss the right shift key because it was chopped down to fit the arrow keys in a 10" board. The left one is full sized. For only $600, this was one of the best deals I've had. New ones sell for ~$1200+ still. I found quite a few of the pcg-505 series on ebay and half.com, most going for around $600-$800. Toshiba makes a very similar model- the 3020CT, and IBM has a similar model as well, although once I saw the Vaios I had to get one. Sony also has their SX series that are about an inch thick with 12.1" active matrix displays. They start at $999 for a Celeron 600/128M/10G up to a pIII 850 last time I looked. I guess they're sub-notebooks, and while note everything can be built in to such a small design, they fit the true meaning of a portable computer. I would pass up a decked out, 6lb+ p3 750 w/ DVD and all that for my 3lb p300 any day. Screen size may seem like an issue, but 1024x768 is plenty, especially from such a small laptop. Just my $0.02
Right there with you on the durability of the 520-series Powerbooks. Those things were tanks. I was walking across campus in the winter with mine in my backback, and my feet went out from under me on the ice... I landed directly on my back from a height of about three feet, and I weigh about 180 pounds. Like you situation, the damage was strictly cosmetic...not even a blown pixel....
Say what you like about Macs, but their laptops are unquestionably good. I recently picked up the new iBook 500 and am running OS X on it, and you know what? It's acceptably fast. It ain't blazing, but I don't feel the need to implode every time I try to launch an app.
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I looked at the powerbook, then I bought one of these (I got mine at a local laptop warehouse for about $2600 USD). Just because it is a PC, doesn't mean it isn't cool.
Basically, you can't get a cheaper laptop that will ship with a top notch UNIX system pre-installed. Sure you could get a PC laptop and dual boot windows and whatever, but why bother?
The iBook is very durable. I threw mine in a pillow case, then put that in my backpack so I could skateboard to school every day and it has withstood all the abuse I have given it.
It's great on the network. If the built in modem, 10/100 ethernet isn't good enough for you, you can have wireless for another 100 bucks. It's industry standard, too so you can fit in just fine on a PC network (did I mention that OS 10.1 will ship with SAMBA?) The networking code is all BSD goodness. It can't get any better than that.
Aqua is also the best GUI I have ever used. I grew up on windows, and used WindowMaker, blackbox, and enlightnement for X. Aqua blows them all away.
The only reason not to buy one is if you can't stand Apple computers or Steve Jobs for some reason. For me, I purchase computers based on technical merit, not based on petty biases, so the iBook was a great choice for me.
I know that it is More than 1k but I have an all in one system I dual boot win2k for work/games and run redhate for redhat. It rocks for both
p3-800 256 mg ram dvd. Even my newbie sys admin was able to figure out the redhat install with an existing win2k install.
I've been running OS X on my new iBook/500/192MB RAM and found it to be quite satisfactory. Quite a bit faster feeling than my old machine, a G4/400/128 MB RAM. I blame the RAM. :)
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Don't buy it if you love Intel/Athlon processors. But this thing is fast, light, has a big beautiful screen, does everything I need a computer to do. X 10.0.4 feels fine on it - can't wait for 10.1. The case is incredibly sturdy - my boss dropped his and dented the corner and cracked the outer casing, but the innards (and the screen) came through unscathed. USB, FireWire, 10/100, VGA out (runs dual-monitor mode, allowing me to run a 1280x1024 2nd monitor at work). Looks nice, too (he he). Apple's desktop offerings leave something to be desired, but the laptops are really nice.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
I use a Vaio PCG F490 All In One. Great machines (we have two). Especially if multimedia matters (FireWire, big screen, DVD player).
The Vaio line in general has great selection to cover most laptop tradeoffs (I went with super heavy, super big, replaced three desktop machines). With 802.11b, it's everything you want. Add a few 1394 hard drives (cheap these days) and a USB CDRW.
Downsides: it's big and heavy (which *does* matter, but I'm not giving up the DVD ROM). The keyboard has troubles (I'm told by tech support it's common to lose keys after about a year and I don't want to be without it for up to 2 weeks while I send it in for repairs, so I haven't fixed it for six months -- try having no underscore or tilde and needing the fake numeric keypad for - and 6, plus losing F2, F4, F6, F10, and maybe F9... oh, and delete). But it was under warranty if I was willing to have it replaced.
Also, the battery died after a year ($250 to buy it quick, no ebay) and the warranty is just one year.
But even with those, I love the Vaios and just bought a Vaio desktop machine as well.
I always tell people that *something* in the Vaio line will appeal to them (if they can come up with the money, they aren't the cheapest on the market).
I'm impulsive. I usually just go get things at the Sony Style Store in SF rather than deal with the online ordering.
- Xowl
$200-$300 is par for a laptop battery. Prices went up drastically when when everybody went to Li-Ion. Perhaps they cost more to manufacture. Perhaps they just expect us to pay for improved battery decay and charge time. In any case, it's something to remember before you buy a used Laptop on EBay -- odds are you'll have to replace the battery.
I have a tecra 8100.
It has a p3-500 and i added an extra 128 megs of ram (seeing as how its so cheap these days) for a total of 192 megs.
it runs amazing.
The best thing about it was the price, it was from an online retailer and was what they called "open box" meaning someone bought it then returned it. Worked flawlessly out of the box.
I run a low end Thinkpad (i1400) and love it, but the new iceBooks are the best I've seen so far. Under 5lbs (barely), 5 hour battery life, clean, crisp screen, gorgeous machine, and then add OS X. I would get one of those before a VAIO.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
1. linux compatible
2. good warranty and service
3. cheap
4. good resolution
5. light
6. long battery life
10. processor power.
I had the sony vaio 505TR, which is hard to come by now. It is fairly linux compatible (I couldn't get the firewire working, and could get the irDA to run at FIR speeds, only at slower speeds). It is fairly cheap (~$1200), very light, 1024x768, has an average battery life (~3 hours), and only a 300Mhz pentium, which was enough for me. screen broke one day :( I would buy that one again, if anyone offered it with a longer warranty than 90days.
Now I have an IBM thinkpad 570. It is the most linux-compatible laptop I ever had - everything works! (including FIR irDA, suspend, hibrenate, winmodem, etc.). 3 year warranty, under $800, 1024x768, pretty light (~4 lbs) but not as light as the X20, or the vaio, has a good battery life (~3.5 hours), and only a 366MHz PII, which again is enough for me. I had an X20 for a short while, and I would recommend the 570 over the X20, unless you really care about the 0.5lbs difference in weight.
The short answer: get an IBM thinkpad 570.
Imagine a Beowolf CLuster of THESE!!!
The Twinhead that I got does have a fan in it. But the fan is thermostatically controlled. I had the computer for months before finding the right (wrong?) conditions to trigger fan operation. In practice, the Twinhead runs fanless.
Twinhead does not have the best prices. I found that Dell had clearly better price/performance. But Dell has a loud fan.
BOTTOM LINE: if you want quiet, the Twinhead is well worth it!
Question: does anyone know of other PC laptops that also have fanless operation? (I will be getting a new laptop in a few months; so I'd like to know about alternatives.)
I'm happy with my second-hand £50 thinkpad 750C.. 10.5" colour, 328mb, 12mb, 2.88mb, scsi, 14k modem, sound... look around on ebay and you'll find some nice bargains just like that. :)
You were expecting a sig?
I must admit, I had my doubts about buying an Apple, but the Titanium PowerBook that I'm typing this from has yet to disappoint me. It's running Mac OS 9, OS X, and YDL 2.0 + my own linux modifications. To anyone wishing to attempt this, I very much recommend using Kernel 2.4.7-pre6 which you can find on Hozed.org somewhere around the end of July / early August. You may have to try a few. I have full power management, (including sleeping with the lid closed) my AirPort with a monitor for it in GKrellm, the autosensing Fast Ethernet port and all sorts of other wonders working. If you have questions about it, shoot me an email and I'll see if I can give you a hand. Yeah, it's rather expensive, but it's rather fast, easy to use, and the display is drop-dead gorgeous. Also, one of these days I'll be putting up a guide to getting Linux working on the TiBook on linuxlaptops.org. Hopefully. Anyway, there's my recommendation.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
3 different MiniPCI cards are available from IBM, and by default every ThinkPad comes with one, although which one depends on your exact model.
- Lucent/Agere Winmodem
- Intel Ethernet and Xircom modem
- 3Com Ethernet and modem
The Lucent/Agere winmodem and the Xircom modem part on the Intel combo card are almost identical, only the PCI ID is different (the Xircom modem part is just a rebranded Lucent/Agere part). Both MiniPCI cards work great with the Lucent WinModem drivers for Linux.
The 3Com card is more problemetic, both for Ethernet (although using a recent kernel should fix that) and for the modem part.
Check out http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/ for more information and drivers.
In short if your going to buy a ThinkPad or want to upgrade your modem-only MiniPCI card to also feature Ethernet, get the Intel card.
The best thing is that I got it for about $500 Canadian (what's that, about $300-$350 US if memory serves me) last year. Still does everything I need, especially with the PCMCIA ethernet card, external SCSI CDROM, and ZIP 250 I got for it (I spent more in peripherals for my laptop than on the laptop itself), although the lack of sound is a pain. Having an MP3 player helps that though, I just wish the RIO supported streaming audio.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Dude, real men use radians...
Toshibas and Thinkpads seem to be the most full-featured laptops. IBM gets points for having lots of bonus options, like firewire, builtin ethernet and modem, etc. And Thinkpads are pretty sturdy. Toshiba is preferred if you want a stable, moderately full-featured machine for reasonable cost. If you can afford it, the Thinkpads are nicer. Both will be pretty good as Linux laptops (exception for the winmodem bits, as previously noted).
I'm much more wary of Dell, after seeing all of my friends' Dell laptops be extremely unreliable. I distrust ATI graphics drivers, and the only audio option is the ASS Master sound card (ESS Maestro). But at least the cases are solid.
We have a few Vaio XG-28's in my office. I think the cases for these are horrible. They're too flimsy, and the ventilation flap on the back breaks easily. Be wary of the newest models. You will have difficulty getting drivers for platforms other than the preinstalled OS. The models have different serial numbers for preinstalled 98 vs. 2000, so drivers for the other line will not install. We had to use a bunch of early-release Japanese-only drivers before Sony allowed us to install 2000 on our win98 vaios.
Can you reccomend anywhere to get Mac laptops cheap? I am looking for one that is 1100 tops before accessories (extra battery if possible, etc). Also, all I need drive wise is a cd-rom (tohugh floppy would be nice). THe cheapest I see on their site is 1300, but I would think they are cheaper somewhere...
In the same vein, Linux isn't the only x86 alternative OS that's a bitch to install... If you want to run the "free" version of Solaris 7 or 8 on a PC laptop, try Xi graphics. They sell an X Display server, but their site also provides help for getting PCMCIA working and some linux support too. I know, $250 for a X server is pretty steep, but the web site is free. ;-) But hey, if you don't know why you should run Solaris x86 on a PC laptop, then well, you probably shouldn't!
But for a measly $17,000(!), you could get an UltraSparc laptop: http://www.tadpole.com/cycle/index.htm
Airport, DVD
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
This laptop is GREAT! I got one with a P3-800, 256MB, 32GB and DVD for $2000 from the Dell Refurbished site. Works VERY well with Win2k and Linux. There is also a very good page at
http://www.envytech.co.uk/5000e/
with information on drivers for most OSs.
Regardless of what laptop you are going to buy, check the refurbished sites first, and also check for pages with info before you buy it! Good Luck!
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Which wireless card do you use, and does it have the same problems?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I'll get slain for this...
but I don't want to run linux on my laptop. I want it to work.
Stats I'm looking for:
13" xga screen (although a 12" xga would be nice)
MIN 600mhz processor
128 meg
10 gig (20+ would be great)
32 meg ATI M4 or GeForce 2go (16 is acceptable)
CD and Floppy in one
I really don't care too much about the processor speed.
I'd like to have win2k, and 95 (or 98, whichever runs oldschool dos stuff better) dual-boot.
All this, for sub-2000$ would be nice.
any ideas?
what?
I have an original iBook SE, and it works -great-, and MacOS 9.1/X dual boot without a problem (using yaboot).
I'd recomend it, and I have to others, and a few have bought, and been happy.
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Ab, vg qbrfa'g shpxvat jbex. Tb onpx gb junpxvat bss, lbh chgm.
- I'm charging the battery, AND
- I'm running a CPU/disk intensive job like a compile, OR
- I'm using my 801.3b card for wireless networking (it sucks up the juice).
If I rely on the built-in Ethernet and am just editing text/browsing the internet/some other non-intensive task, the fan never comes on. Even if doing CPU-intensive tasks, the fan never comes on unless I'm charging the battery or have the wireless networking card plugged in. (The wireless card is, alas, a power hog, and generates a lot of heat, thus why it triggers the thermostatic control of the fan).My only complaint is that the 20gb laptop hard drives are *LOUD*. My Presario doesn't have a hard drive activity light but that does not matter -- you can hear the hard drive working :-}.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I just bought my iBook and since that's the price range you'll be looking at, just know that an Apple dealer advised me that Apple allows no margins for the iBooks, so the dealers and resellers can't really compete on price. That's why I'd recommend buying it from your local dealer rather than mail order or direct from Apple. You'll get better service if you need it. Also, as stated previously, don't buy RAM from Apple -- they way overcharge. I've had my iBook for a week now and think it's great. OS X is still a little show in launching apps, but all reports say that 10.1 (due in Sept) shows a 3-5 times speed increase when launching apps. This is my first Mac (used many Windoze and Unices though) and it gives me great comfort to know there's a command line interface available if I need it.
Some of you may remember Tuxtops, a linux laptop company. We stopped selling laptops at the beginning of the year, and I no longer work for them, but dealing with laptops and support issues on a larger scale has given me at least more data than most people have. Here's some observations:
* Our best model was the Obsidian (Premium) 30w. This is the same as the Dell Inpsiron 5000, made by a Taiwanese company called Compal (the biggest laptop manufacturer in the world.) I'm actually typing this on one right now. It has a nice-sized keyboard, big screen, powerful components. It isn't lightweight (as far as modern laptops go), but they were by far the most reliable model.
* The really cheap model we sold, made by ASUS, used mostly desktop parts to cut costs. It was inexpensive, but you paid the price. The units would easily overheat - when we started doing overnight cpu-heavy burn-in tests, it became apparant what the drawbacks of this approach were. For the sales-guy who does email and demos on the road, it'd be okay, but for anyone who knows what a makefile is, avoid these kinds of laptops. They're likely to go into Thermal Shutdown with virtually no notice.
* We had a really cool model show up last year that was ultralight, with a detachable bay where the CD-ROM and floppy sat. If you could leave that behind, it was a phenomenal design. However, in practice, we found that there were frequently problems with the docking, and many systems were very delicate. Getting it to dock properly could be difficult, moreso than it should be.
* We had one model that we sold for our first few months that had almost all the pressure from the lid on one hinge. Unsurprisingly, the case cracked easily through regular use - we lost money overall on this unit with all the replacements, and stopped selling it as soon as we saw the trend. This was just poor engineering.
* An early ultralight we sold had a really awful keyboard and was also prone to heat problems.
The morals? The quality of a piece of laptop hardware can vary greatly, much more so than in desktops. Our best experiences were with the more traditional designs (I know my current company is also going away from VAIOs and towards the Dell/Thinkpad designs, due to reliability problems in the field.) There are design tradeoffs to make things ultra-light and ultra-cheap, and in my experience, they weren't worth it.
Go for the big brick with the big screen. Buy from someone who has good tech support - you can't replace parts if they go bad yourself, like with a desktop. Pay attention to what people are saying in places like this thread - laptop models are definitely susceptible to design flaws. From my experience, physical flaws (ie, cracked cases) and overheating are issues to be very sensitive to. (Note: getting warm is different than overheating. Most laptops get warm. Most of them do not regularly go into Thermal Shutdown. That's what you want to avoid.)
Good luck!
-- Kate
my first laptop was used as an extension to my desktop. all of my real work i did on my desktop, and i carried a laptop around with me so i could pop up a few text editors in my downtime on campus, taking public transportation to work, etc. if this is how you plan to use your laptop, probably the biggest feature to look for is weight (or more specifically, lack of it) and price. you're probably best of finding a small (~4lb) thinkpad on ebay for something like this. i got a thinkpad 560 off ebay when it was a little over a year old, and i loved it.
now, at my last two jobs, i have used a laptop as my primary computer, instead of a desktop. in this case, you are going to have to bite the bullet on size and weight and get something a lot more full featured. my first job got me an ibm a20. it was an ok machine, but i never liked it much.
since then i have had a dell i8000. i cant say how happy i have been with the dell. when i first got it, it was a little hard to get linux installed because of the pcmcia controller (the pcmcia-cs package at the time would cause a kernel panic, so i had to boot w/o pcmcia support and upgrade to a newer pcmcia-cs) that issue should be resolved if you use anything more recent than redhat 7.0. aside from that, all of the hardware is well supported in linux (haven't tried the new nVidia chip yet - i'm getting one of those next week, but the ati rage mobility works great) and the large display's are beautiful (my biggest requirement for a laptop that is supposed to replace a desktop. i prefer 1600x1200, and i cant stand anything less than 1280x1024 on my primary work machine) even the price of the 8000's isn't too bad: about $2500 for a nearly loaded machine (800MHz, 256MB RAM, UXGA display, 20GB drive) they're only shortcoming is their weight. the 8000's are bricks.... but, as i said before, if you're looking to fully replace your desktop pc with a laptop, you're probably going to have to scrifice small size for a more fully featured machine.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Since when?
Find a large flat pastic case. Fit about 15 D-sized NiMH (4-5 amp hour type) cells into it to make 19 volts (or whatever your power supply reads), and install a barrel connector the same as on your laptop power supply. Keep the device under your laptop during use. Or even glue it to the bottom of your laptop. It may be a bit bulky, but I gurantee you it will run your machine all day on a full charge. And battery replacement is far cheaper. Standard cells, right?
Hmm, smart posting. I'll keep your company in mind for any painful linux-laptop needs.
Though I'd probably get a dual-boot config, since then Dell/IBM/Sony's tech support would complain that the fault is in software, or that they can't possibly support a machine with a non-standard OS. And they'd be right.
I'm perfectly happy with my Gateway Solo 2150. P3 600Mhz, 64 Meg Ram, 1024x768 display. The only complaint I have about it is that the vid card is only 4 meg. Other than that it is a great machine. I primarlily use it for web development, so the vid card is no that great of a deal to me. SLightly of topic, has anyone seen the new Fuji notebooks with the touch screen disply? Are they any good?
I have two laptops for two different purposes. My Sony Vaio is PROBLEM city. The hardware is all kinds of messed up. When it is running, it's a decent laptop but an old one at that (P2 300Mhz, 64mb RAM, 1st gen DVD drive). The modem in it is fine however when I'm at home I pop in a LinkSys 802.11b PCMCIA card. It is basically for me to just play around in. The other laptop is a very impressive Apple Titanium G4. This thing is my baby! It is actually for doing work (I work for a photo studio) and does the job very well. I didn't expect a laptop to handle huge image files as it's bigger brother the Power G4 did but I was pleseantly surprised - image editting is a breeze and it's fast enough even for my tastes. I also enjoy how small and light this beauty is.
a new gateway laptop is pretty vague. how /much/ was it and what /didnt/ it have? a friends lab plopped a couple of grand on one and it had neither vga out nor ethernet nor firewire, and just one usb port. not to mention really crappy build quality (a gateway thing it would seem). their next laptop was an ibook
the main posters point still stands: unless you are wedded to x86, its hard to beat a mac notebook. that cd-rw/combo drive and 5 hour battery life for $1.5 grand is pretty sweet. and yes they run linux
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Right now I'm looking for a new server. But I'm tired of these mammoth boxes. So i looked into server appliances, but they lacked coonfigurability. So I though to my self what about a notebook computer? I'm on the phone with Dell right now to see what they say. IBM merely tried to sell me their most expensive laptop. -no thanks. Since I don't need great graphics or sound, etc. What I need is a fast cpu losts of memory and a speed HD. Any ideas?
:T:R:A:N:S:
The one problem I have with it is that it only has one type-II PCMCIA slot, so I can't use both wireless networking and the external CD-ROM drive at the same time. But, for my purposes, that isn't an issue. Some people might find the keyboard a bit annoying since the right shift key is small and squished between the "/" and up-arrow keys, but I've only mis-hit a handful of times, so it doesn't bother me. Also, the screen (12.1") might be too small for some people's needs.
Since I was aiming for a cheap, light computer instead of a desktop replacement, I got the lowest-end Celeron 650. The high end model "only" has a P-III 850 and 256MB, if you want a little more power.
Actually, I have a laptop as powerful as a desktop at twice the price, but it was important to me.
I wanted a powerful system I could put on my lap, since I hate desks, and try to avoid them whenever possible. That tends to make desktops problematic. Being able to work on the couch, in bed, in my ikea chair, on the balcony (all with wireless networking) was important to me.
So I got an IBM Thinkpad A20p
However, the one thing I would like to see, but have never had much luck finding, is a reasonable sub-notebook that can dualboot Windows and Linux, and maybe play DVDs via an external drive if required (for hotels) that will let be grab it, run downstairs and plug into a network or device and open a console/telnet/ssh session.
No problem? Vaio?
Bzzzt! Wrong! No serial port. Who remembers those stupid adapters when you just lost remote access to a router? Any suggestions?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Oh man. Please please, post the brand/model of the "unbreakable" laptop. I really need a laptop for what I do but I just know it'd get dropped. That is exactly what I need!
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
i use a T20 too and love it. I wouldn't touch a mac laptop or a sony or a compaq or a toshiba with a 50 foot pole(don't like the companies). But IBM (as a company) is good in my book(1 page long). so i buy from them any chance i get.
Nothing comes close to the Apple Titanium. All the Intel stuff is light years behind.
I got my iBook for list, but no sales tax, free shipping, free 128 MB RAM, and I got 5% back with my on-line VISA card.
There are loads of good Mac sites out there, you might want to start at MacSlash.com :)
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
I know HP is not known for it's Laptops, but about 3 months agao I got a Pavilion XH216 Pretty sweet for $1100. 15" Screen, Mini-PCI NIC/Modem, onboard CD-RW, 700 mhz, 128mb ram. All at 7lbs. The laptop will even play CD's without turning the complete system on.
I was just wondering, does the IBM T20 take a lot of wear? Such as using it for hours everyday.
The price is too high 1600 pounds 2000 dollars but the C1VFK sony vaio looks sweet, crusoe processor 15 gig hard disk, and weights 1kg and even have bluetooth, and a 3 button mouse... just asking for linux to be installed if you ask me.
James
this thing is great. it has everything i need and it's not excessively flashy. screen is stunningly beautiful, dvd is crisp and clean. firewire for movies...no more legacy ports!! 3d is acceptable...quake3, tribes2, unreal tournament, thps2 all wonderful! 1500 for dvd, 10gb, 128mb, a glowing apple on the back of the display. in a review, the reviewers said they threw it accross a gymnasium and it still worked...in addition to throwing baseballs at it! -=jimbo=-
I didn't really want a Laptop, but then I saw the Vaio's SR series, and they were just too cute not to buy one, so I decided I really wanted one. I finally got a PGC-Z505LE, less cute but a bit more performant (more video RAM!). It has no CDrom drive but I don't really care, I don't even use the usb floppy disk they gave me... well, I used it once.
Then I got interested about installing Linux on it: I now have a Debian potato with a 2.4 kernel. It supports my usb floppy drive, well, can always be useful in emergency situations.
It has a winModem, but ethernet too, and since at home I have a little domestic network, well, who cares.
So I am definitely happy with my Vaio and I would suggest it to anyone. Well, it was shipped with WinME, and that kinda sucks, but Linux wasn't hard to install, even without a CDrom.
Vic
...first a 600-series, and now a T20. The T20 has a great screen, and lots of nifty features (memory space, processor, ports, ultrabay, etc.) stuffed into its 5 lb package. I do miss, however, the keyboard and slightly smaller size of the 600E. The 600E also seemed to be a bit more solidly constructed.
If you don't absolutely need the latest and greatest, try to find a 600E or 600X.
These are the some of the coolest computers out there. You may have some hardware problems, but still, its worth it. Do you hate mice, trackballs, erasers, pads, etc.? How about a touchscreen? That's point and click. And I swore I'd never get a LCD until I could actually see the picture. These almost deliver. And the case is no-doubt styling from Milan to Tokyo. Most important of all, crumbs in the keyboard are a thing of the past. Oh, integrated wireless, too. CDPD :(
The laptop itself has turned out really well - it's fast enough and has a good enough screen (14.1") to be a desktop replacement, and the battery life is acceptable (it's gone from 3.5 hours when new to ~2 hours today). In fact, outside of the screen width and the g4-g3 difference, it's the same computer as the powerbook g4 (same top mhz rating today). Most 3rd party modules you'd want are still being sold, and it runs osx, 9.1, virtual pc and linux, so there's no lack of os choice. Oh, and there's a cool upside-down glowing apple on the back of the screen.
install ltmodem insmod "-f" "-k" "ltmodem"
I have to ask, are there "-u" and "-c" switches to put in there as well? It would seem so to the point.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If you like the T20, and the above mentioned part doesn't work, then don't spend your bucks on a new laptop when yours is decent, buy a USR, er I mean 3COM, or is that XIRCOM today(?) pmcia modem/network card: 3C3FEM556C apx $140 Anyways, I believe 140-200 is much better than spending 1K+ to satisfy a modem problem. Cheers.
Dell's are good, I don't know how linux would run on a latitude, but, i like those for straight winDoS purposes. Theyre a nice little package. All that dell stuff can have all the stuff (modem, NIC) built in so you have all your PCMCIA slots free for cool extras.
an important thing to remember when buying laptops, or anything is never get the home (l)user grade (unless price is an issue). If you can handle the extra expense, get the low to mid (or high) end BUSINESS grade stuff.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
I just picked up an HP Pavilion 5430 for a musician friend of mine. For $1350 (plus $150 in rebates), it's got an 850 Duron, 256mb, 20 gigs, 14.1 screen, DVD, built-in modem and 10/100, and a video out jack so you can plug it into a TV. Sweet deal. Plus it looks pretty cool. We decided we hated the little clit-stick pointers on the Thinkpads and Toshibas and looked exclusively at touchpad models. This HP has a big button at the top of the touchpad so you can switch the pad off if you tend to bump it while typing - nice touch.
Another cool touch is that its front edge contains a little LCD screen and controls for the CD player, so you can play CDs on it even with the machine closed and powered off. The screen also displays battery life, and all the buttons light up green. The built in Polk speakers don't actually sound that great, but there's a headphone jack that sounds just fine. Can't imagine this is terribly useful for anyone, but it looks real keen.
So far, for $1200, I'm blown away by this thing. It comes with WinME, but on the plus side, in its defense, it didn't come loaded up with a dozen useless crappy programs running in the system tray, like the Compaqs I've bought. Overall: recommended!
I bought a IBM Z50 Windows CE 2.11 device off of ebay, for $195. It has 48mb of ram, no moving parts, a 640x480 color screen, a CF slot, a PCMCIA slot, builtin 56k modem, builtin audio-recorder, its instant on and off, and its about 1" thick.
It's not really too fast, but its great for what I use it for - it syncs with exchange out of the box, and moving word/excel documents back and forth is also very easy. It has a WTS client and of course you can get ssh and telnet clients for it. It will work with Aironet cards (mine are hopefully in the mail).
Best of all ?
10+ hours of battery life.
Who else has a 2 pound 10hr VGA wireless device ?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I am the director of IT at a small software engineering lab and I have seen a lot of laptops from a lot of different makers and in my opinion the gateway 9500 is the way to go, it is bar none the best laptop out there and this is coming from a dell guy. I have over 350 dell workstations and we have quite a few dell laptops but the new dells cannot compete with the new gateway 9500 I just ordered the 9500xl it is sweet and pound for pound cheaper then the dells. However if you want lots of goodies cheap go to www.sagernotebooks.com they make a good (heavy) books cheap. Happy shoping and good luck.
what if price is one of my variables?
what if "reasonably light" isn't good enough for me? Even this "worldbeating" design makes compromises.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
the VWs tend to be complete crap, even compared to American and Japanese cars. I would recomend against anything from them. An Audi would be an excellent choice however.
We had a Vaio fail 3 weeks out of the box and it took nearly 6 months and a court judgement to get them to honor the warranty. We've since heard from others with the same problem.
I've had good experiences with Toshibas and Dells. Not sure about others like Compaqs or Gateways. I've had bad experiences with Sony and would stay away from them.
Are you dual booting with Windows? I find I have to power down after running Win2K and before booting Linux or else the sound no workee. However if I do a cold start it works every time.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
I absolutely can't stay quiet about this thread. i was using a compaq bought from a friend for ~$700 (k6-2 433, 64mb ram, 6gb, 12.1", dvd) until it fell off my desk and got a cracked display. being back in the market for a laptop (i NEED a portable computer), I went out in town to see what could be found. hoorah! a sony VAIO, 14.1", duron 700, dvd, 20gb, ehternet and modem, 128mb ram with firewire, 2 usb and intigrated, hardware video out. 2 pcmcia slots. unfortunately, it came with win2k in japanese, so i wiped it and put red hat 7.1 on it. so far, it runs beautifully (except that the modem doesn't work and the sound has to be turned up to >75% to be audible). all for 170,000 yen (1450$ with the exchange rate). absolutely cannot be beat.
We use the following where I work:
Panasonic CF-71 ToughBook - Heavy duty, impossible to break, believe me I know. My users made a weekly event of at least one person breaking their screen on their Toshiba Tecras. Since we started using the Toughbooks for the well-traveled user we haven't had a single break. Also, the tool-less hard drive swap-out is always nice for those remote users.
Dell Inspiron 8000 - True desktop replacement. DVD player and seperate CDRW, swappable hard drive, huge screen with 1280x1024 or even 1400x1280, very nice for the developers.
Apple G4 Titanium - What can I say? The coolest notebook this side of the planet. The screen is stupendous and I don't mean just for DVD's. The G4 make OSX useable (no flames please, it's a dog on the G3's). Our execs love them as well as our graphics people.
IBM ThinkPad T20 - If this thing had a touchpad instead of the freakin eraserhead it would be my favorite. The ThinkPad has always been the Cadillac of notebooks (Gateway being the Ford Fiesta). Tough and with a lot of lovely built-in accessories, it's always a great choice.
Some features that I like:
1) Built-in antenna for 802.11b like the G4.
2) Tool-less removable hard drive.
3) Built-in Ethernet, modem, USB, FireWire.
4) Big battery with real-world runtime expectations.
5) NO MORE AD/DC CONVERSION BRICKS! With some kind of universal power cord like desktops.
6) Combo DVD/CDRW drive, maybe even a combo with DVDR or DVDRW.
7) Multiple swap-out drive bays like the Inspiron.
8) More than 2 PCMCIA slots.
9) Linux, BSD and Solaris/Intel friendly.
I bought a laptop about three months ago (Toshiba Satellite 1755, see above for my praise thereof) and thought "hell, I'll just get this cheap little Netgear LAN card and it'll work fine for me.
Three of those little conduit-dongle thingies (and three returns) later, I'm at CompUSA shelling out $60 more to get the Xircom card. Sure, it takes up one more PCMCIA slot, but I can plug it directly into my network cable and don't have to worry about breaking any more of those stupid things.
I'm glad I switched.
InigoMontoya(tm)
This signature is self-referential.
I am looking at a ibook and a dell. Anyone know what which processor would be faster in compile times? I would be using my laptop for a lot of sw development, ie., comp. sci homework :) . I know that you can't directly compare clockspeeds across architectures, so just wondering if these two processors are comparable.
Also, is is possible to upgrade the cpu on laptops? iBooks? Dell inspirions?
~SQL
Elbows out...
Has anyone been able to figure out the difference between the Insprion 8000 and the Latitude C800? We buy nothing but Dell laptops and work and both types have crossed my desk. The funny thing is that they seem almost identical, same chassis and everything... I think both are great though, if you need a powerful laptop and don't care that much about weight and battery life, this is worth looking into. And for a laptop, it's relatively cheap at around $2,000 base.
If you cannot commit to buying a laptop from someone who provides real Linux Laptops (TuxTopsLink) try and choose someonee who gives something back to the community (read: IBM && *NOT* Dell). All things being equal (in the price/performance issues) you can use some of your dollars to 'vote for Linux' - and if you buy the laptop, with windows preinstalled (return windows) and *TELL* the vendor you are installing linux on it. (not just some flunky in a store - but send an email to a 'pr person' of some type that you retrieve from their homepages) or better yet, call their 1.800. number and ask about linux support!
my laptop can do that too... but only in win98... not in 95, me, 2k, xp, or linux
Need a Catering Connection
Transmeta chip, Linux, up to 240mb RAM /40GB HD
in a portable you can carry in a fanny pack/bum
bag:
http://www.ozetechnology.com/howtos/C1VM.shtml
http://org.netbase.org/vaio/
Btw, anyone got a battery for this thing?
I use a Sager laptop http://www.sagernotebook.com It has a large screen, large drive, large RAM, 1394 port, dual USB, CDR/RW, DVD, Intergrated NIC & Modem, ...
But it isn't a sissy lightweight (~10lbs)
When I was looking for a notebook about 6 months ago, I gave myself two requirements: a DVD drive and a TV out port. All I need a notebook for is word processing and network access while I'm on the go. The DVD drive was a result of my wanting to splurge a bit. Pretty much any notebook you get these days will meet your basic needs plus some. Unless you are going to do graphics editing on the go, just look around for the best deal you can find. I wound up with a factory refurbished Compaq 17XL265 that came with Win98SE (and is now dual booting with Mandrake 8.0) for about $400 below retail.
Look here for IBM Thinkpads with Linux preloaded.
Ruger
3D apps run great on it. They seems to actually run faster then on my desktop system with a GeForce II GTS(Same processor, same memory). And I bought it rebuilt which saved me about 450 bucks.
The home of the 3D Socialization and Interaction Engine
If I'm spending someone elses money, it's no contest... An Apple ti G4 Powerbook This is one sweet titanium coated screamer. Add an AirPort card, shake, and hit the road.
If I'm spending my own money, it'll be an Apple iBook with the CD-R option. Very cool form factor, light weight, a 500 mhz G3, and AirPort. What more could you want?
With OS X and a bunch of aftermarket RAM, I'm one happy camper with either one.
has anyone hacked the ibm ThinkPad TransNote? this looks like a near perfect tool for someone like me - bad hand writing, linedrawings, and stuff.. Just wondering about how useful anyone has found it.
Only somewhat slightly dazed.
Above all else ... above the monitor, battery life, video card, hard disk .... get a laptop with a keyboard you can type on.
I used a Dell Inspiron 7500 as a desktop replacement for about a year with no problems whatsoever. I used a Thinkpad T20 for about an hour before swearing I'd never use that rediculous keyboard again.
If it's on your desk you can plug an external keyboard in. If you're using it while travelling it's not an option... and if you can't type on it comfortably that pretty much makes it worthless.
It (T20) does have a neat dome light though.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
What is the CHEAPEST laptop that you can find? And I mean new manufacture, warranty...1500 seems like a lot for me to check email and type (poorly) documents when on the go. Which is rarely.
They load Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4, of all things. Any other linux ought to work just fine, though. Red Hat has a Hardware Compatibility Page which lists other laptops known to work.
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Well, I've been running Mac OS X on an Apple iBook (Graphite, 320 MB RAM, Airport wireless) for almost a year now and it's one damn good machine. I only hope that Apple's next release of OS X will be as cool as the demo at MacWorld. You can also run Yellow Dog Linux if you want to avoid Mac OS X.
A'right, I know I'm gonna get it for this one, but I'm so in love with my sweet little Gateway Solo 9500. Yea, you say, Gateway is the computer manafacturer equiv of AOL - catering to the 'cupholder' market segment - but they DO know how to build a computer
::glares at IBM::.
::grins:: it's got a really cute silver-and-black case too. Heh. :)
850 MHz PIII processor, DVD player, 128 meg of memory, 1024 by 768 active-matrix screen (must for late-night IRC sessions). Close to full-size keyboard. Internal modem...AND 10/100 Ethernet adapter...which I love. 's even got an internal floppy drive, unlike certain other manafacturers I could mention
It does everything I need with style. True, it's mostly a desktop for me, but I still love it, and when I do stick it under my arm and go for a walk, or troubleshoot something on the network at a remote location, it *works*.
True, it eats batteries, but it's got a modular bay you can stick another in. It's also a bit clunky compared to the Solo 1100 or some other models, but it's a trade I'll willingly make.
Oh...and it's shallow...but
"Use different passwords for each system. Change once a month. Do not write anything down." "Squeal like a pig!"
Pain(n): when you're telnetting into a box doing somethin cool, and some luser calls for help with a 'critical error' ad
My boss has one of these, happily running Debian. Works like a charm (a little slow, but who really cares?), you can easily fit it in a standard backpack along with a pile of other junk, but it retains a keyboard that you can touch-type on.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Well, I'm posting this from a Latitude CP running RedHat 7.1, so you have at least one example of it installing and running decently (stock RH laptop install - no custom kernel). I don't fiddle much with PCMCIA, though, so I can't really comment on how well it does (or doesn't) support that... as usual, YMMV.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I beg to differ, but the IBM T20, as many other laptops, use a miniPCI card for the internal modem and network. That mean that the Lucent is only one of the possible options. In my case, my T20 has the 3Com combo card. The ethernet works, but no luck with the modem.
Even better, Use this website - they have src drivers for ltmodems http://www.heby.de/ltmodem
um. pun. as in SIGN ov the beast. satan isn't a real man anyway. he's a she.
(told YOU!)
I've been using a T20 for about a year now, and am quite pleased.
I have my eyes on an iBook, but it seems a bit on the slow side, and the TiBook too fragile. A 733 MHz G3 iBook with Mac OS X 10.1 would be extremely nice...
1000 bucks won't buy you the GHz proc, or the 32MB video card, or the 256 MB of RAM... But, it will net you a 600+ MHz processor, AGP video, a 14-inch or larger LCD, and 64-128 MB. My personal choice, cost not withstanding, was the Dell Inspiron 8000 -- 1 GHz, 32 MB GeForce-to-Go video, 256 MB RAM (512 available), 30 GB HDD, built-in DVD, CD-RW available for the optional bay (in place of the standard floppy)...
I took a long hard look at my portable computing needs, and decided to get an Itronix rugged laptop. Why? Well, I take it with me back and forth to school every day, so I wanted something that will stand up to the abuse of the bus (yea, so I use public tranportation) the local Seattle weather and any other general mayhem I encounter in a typical day. I've had 2 laptops previous to this one and they both died from being banged around in my backpack. Not this one! The main things I use it for are writing papers, surfing the web and emailing, so I have no need for dvd, huge lcd, stereo speakers blah blah... It has a built in CDPD wireless modem so I'm always connected on the go. I have 3 full sized machines at home if I need to do some serious power computing.
Sure, it's binary only, but it works.
If you want the source to this modem driver, go to http://www.heby.de/ltmodem. On Debian, I simply modprobe ltserial and ltmodem, with no options on the IBM ThinkPad X21. SB the same on the T20.
BTW, it's been updated significantly since 5.68 (6.00 was just released). I'm currently using 5.99 without any significant issues, except sometimes long initial handshaking.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Right now I would not trade the PowerBook G3 for a G4 for three reasons:
- Proportions -- yes, the G4 is thiner and lighter but it is wider and doesn't fit well in most carry cases -- this is a nitpick
- AirPort reception -- I use my G3 on a wireless network 99% if the time and the reception is far superior because of the placement of the antenna and the plastic vs. Titanium case
- Batteries -- I trade weight for battery life and carry two batteries in the G3 for maximum battery life while roaming around the network at work
If I had to replace the G3 today it would be a tough choice. The iBook would be a drop in performance but lighter. The G4 would be a great performer but has some annoying flaws.The iBook also has a better 'touch' than the G4 I think... it fells better in your hands and the keyboard seems more natural to use... but that is based on brief periods of use.
-G
Praise "Bob"
most of the laptops are made by a handful of asian
companies for the likes of Smell, Gateway, etc.
A number of them will sell directly with basically
the identical unit.
That said.. Sony blows. Personal experience with
mobo frying, out of warranty and Sony wanting to
snake $1500 off me for a new one. Nice eh?
- I haven't been able to get my HP Pavilion N5240 to suspend (or sleep, etc.), which is quite a drag.
- Those convenient CD buttons have no driver under Linux, so they're useful only under Windows, or when the laptop is off.
- No 3D drivers for the Savage chipset. (?) I'm not sure whether the composite-video-out can be enabled under Linux, either.
It does have pretty nice ergonomics, audio works, 2D video works, and the price was right. Without suspend, though, I'd recommend choosing something else.--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
After years of happy dealings with business Compaqs, I bought a Compaq Presario 12XL510 for personal use.
It only runs Windoze ME!! Forget NT, 98, 95. After some tweaking, I have Redhat 7.1 working but, of course, it has no drivers for the touchpad, winmodem, higher video functions, etc.
Compaq consumer support sucks. No drivers. "You can only use Windoze ME."
....and I just sold three dozen Dells to my latest client. Bahahahahahahah!!!!!
The most important applications are web surfing, Word and the ability to play DVDs on the plane with Civilization II next in line. Unfortunately I can't get Tomb Raider to work on my Sony Vaio Z505
What I would really like to get hold of is one of those tablet PCs with pen input. I used to have a couple of CrossPads but the software sucketh somewhat and is is something of a kludge. It is not bad at handwriting recognition but it is tedious having to tell it each time you turn the page. I would be happy to pay $3K for a tablet PC with a decent spec, but getting hold of one in the US appears impossible. Anyone know if they work?
The Sony is pretty cute, the revamp looks slightly better, I have the plug in DVD which is a pain for plane flights.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
That's one thing that they screwed up with on the PBG4 - firewire. Apparently the iBook is much better for firewire i/o than the tiBook, which used an early rev FW chipset or something...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I picked up a C1XS (400Mhz PII, Sony Picturebook) on eBay for $1000. Runs Linux perfectly. Just love it. Check this out for example. Not a C1XS, but it's just a different CPU anyway... /E
Feature #1 -- a quiet fan.
Some of these laptops can double as hair dryers... a loud fan and plenty of hot air. My Taiwanese FOSA at home has a pretty loud and hot hair dryer included. My Dell at work is almost silent.
// Alan Porter
I've had it since my freshmen year(I'm a senior now) Stats: Pentium 266mhz with MMX 32ram(upgraded to 96) 4 gig(replaced the original with a 6gb) floppy (that doesn't work anymore for some reason) 12x cd-rom drive 12.1 Active Matrix TFT Screen max res 800x600 I have loved it... except when the harddrive crashed and cost me my 50 page history honors report due the next day. It has always worked really well except lately when trying to work with photoshop and dreamweaver the 800x600 screen ain't cuttin it anymore... I'm kind of looking forward to getting the new Toshiba 2805-S602 with a Geforce2Go.... Tribes 2 on a laptop... Mmmmm
What's it like without a right mouse button? Everything about them sounds nice (decent speed, good battery life, decent prices) but I cannot imagine running X without two mouse buttons. Middle button pasting, middle clicking in Netscape for a new windows, and right clicking all over the place for numerous other functions. Sure, an external mouse would be possible - but not exactly feasible on the go.
I have Thinkpad T21. One of the first things I did was replacing winmodem with modem-ethernet combo by 3COM, which works great. And IBM's service is great. I had a problem with the power supply (noise) and after a caal to tech support they sent me a new one - they didn't even want the old one back.
I definitely agree with you on this one. I have two laptops: a Sony PCG-F580 and a Toshiba Libretto 50ct. While I love the power and big screen of the Sony, it's hard on the shoulders (7 or so pounds!). The Toshiba goes anywhere. Also, with two extended life batteries, I can go for six hours without having to tether myself to a wall socket.
Yet, how many of these deals on ebay are stolen laptops? Andrew
Yeah, I have a pretty beatup PowerBook G3 (a wallstreet, I believe). Works
:) But my PowerBook doesn't like my cheap ass
beautifully under Linux, except for a few noted exceptions (which are really
hardware problems):
1) Only one mouse button. You might think this doesn't matter. Well, just
try using only one mouse button on your desktop Linux box for a week. Can't
do it, can you? Two mouse buttons are really essential to running under
Xwindows.
2) It's dying. The power management unit is faulty, so every once in a
while it justs turns itself off. No warning, just blank screen off.
3) Doesn't like my PCMCIA NICs. Even though it has a NIC built in, it's
only 10bT. I like 100bT
noname brand NICs which work fine on other platforms (Alpha and ia32
included).
4) Screen blanking kills X. The best power saving feature in the world, and
it doesn't work. Everytime my screen blanks, it kills my Xwindows session.
Other than that, the machine's a beaut. Not the fastest or top of the line,
but considering it was made about 1997-1998, it does pretty decently. It's
also a little heavy (I'm guesstimating about 7lbs. with a battery in each
bay), but us geeks could always use some excercise.
Nathan's blog
No, not buying it for games, but I *am* buying it for X, and some X apps don't like smaller screens. 1024X768 seems to be the minimum that it's happy with.
But, it was a Commodore 64 portable. I have only seen 1 in my life, they are quite rare. Thats the kinda machine I wanna carry around!
Hmmm, was NetBSD ever ported to the Commodore ?
until (succeed) try { again(); }
A Palm Pilot.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Show me real world benchmarks that show a g3 faster than equivilently clocked p3's. Show me real world benchmarks that show a g4 more than marginally faster than equivilently clocked p3's.
You cannot. because none exist.
thank you, please come again.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
What's a good Linux 802.11b solution? I'm going to school in a few days and the network's gonna be wireless. Here's the catch: I know jack squat about setting up such things as Linux PCMCIA cards. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good Linux notebook AND a good Linux 802.11b solution?
I have been searching very seriously for the past few weeks for a good laptop. I have never owned or touched for that matter, a laptop. I have seen them but have never learned that much about them.
So I've been researching and finding out lots of different stuff. First is, Gateway is one place I am staying away from. I'll just say that I went to one of their "Gateway Country" stores and had a very very bad experience with their laptops.
Dell is looking very favoribility in my book. They seem to be good machines from what people say. The biggest issue for me is price. I am not looking to drop that much into a machine. Sure, I have read on here that you should spend the money and make sure you get a great machine, but I have been finding that you can find some bargains that don't seem too bad.
Dell has some lower-priced models that can compete with some of their higher-end models in terms of speed and the such. They also have been having some very attractive sales lately that I'm sorry I missed out on.
One thing that has REALLY caught my attention from reading this is about the Apple laptops. Are they really that good? I have read numerous people on this page rant and rave about them. I checked out Apple's site and they are expensive! I never thought they would be, but you can pick up a Dell that is 50% faster/bigger for less money!
So is Apple really worth the money? I have used Apple stuff for about a week total in my life, and while I didn't find them horrible, they seemed different. Isn't everyone here running Linux or Windows? I have seen Windows be the domiant operating system on Laptops, not just because Microsoft has a handle on the whole industry, but because it seems that Windows runs really good on laptops and there are less problems.
So I'll continue my search for good bargains on powerful machines and maybe get lucky one of these times. If anyone has any suggestions please email me. I'm interested in all the information I can get.
... if you feel comfortable buying that way. I prowled UBid.com for laptops for a while and managed to snag a good deal, a HP Pavilion 5135 for under $700. My unit came to me with no cosmetic damage of any kind, and was probably new but just overstocked. There are risks, to be sure, but also deals to be had. Caveat emptor.
Incidentally, I installed Mandrake 8 on it, which worked right out of the box -- video, sound, USB Zip drive and ethernet PC card (haven't tried modem or suspend mode) worked fine with no additional downloads or other fooling around required! (I'm not a Linux expert) After upgrading to 192MB of RAM it purrs quite nicely under this distro. Since Linux drivers for new notebook components take time to appear, buying refurbished older models may be a way to save a lot of setup pain...
I've got the one with a ordinary cdrom and not a DVD.
I'm running RH 7.1 with Linux 2.4.7
The winmodem *works*, the soundcard works with
the ALSA drivers. Resolution is 1024x768 on LCD as on external screen. Internal Network card is also working well with the Tulip driver.
And the best is that this machine is cheap !
ps.: The only problem is that I should not reboot but do a shutdown if I want to reboot; The kernel seems to hang when detecting the PCI stuff after a reboot.
Anyways, check this one, I'm sure you won't regret it !
I bought a Compaq - Armada M300 several months back, and I absolutely love it!
:)
I spent alot of time researching the current laptops on the market. The important factors for me were: weight, size, and functionality (i.e. serial, parallel etc).
The Armada M300 is currently the lightest Compaq to choose from, wieght is about 3.5 lbs (the same as the lightest VAIO, aside from the picturebook). Plus it has serial/parallel ports and a better video card (1024x768, but 1600x1200 if you hook it up to an external monitor). None of which the VAIO has.
This means I can use my cell phone to connect (via serial), hook up my Psion, or use it as a terminal client in the server room!
A couple downsides are the Windmodem (which can be used with a binary driver I believe), and I haven't been able to reliably recover from a suspend in linux (maybe kernel version?).
I highly reccomend the light, compact, and fully featured Compaq Armada M300!
The one thing that keeps me away from the new iBook is the lack of a PCMCIA slot. Sure it has a built in modem, network, and 802.11b, but it dosen't have built in CDPD. Thats the main use of a PCMCIA slot for me. Plus it's nice to use CF adaptors, etc...
My current laptop is a Compaq Armada M700 that my work gave to me. It dosen't excel in any specific area, but is great all around. Compaq's professional line (Armada and Evo) might be worth a look. (And because of this one, I can't see myself easially going back to a plastic case)
Dongles are awful. Any card with dongles doesn't even cross my list. I do own one card with a dongle, but it (seriously) was found in a trashcan in Brooklyn, and I keep it as much as a momento / trophy as for its intended purpose. (It does work though, even if it's only a 10Mbps card.)
Both D-Link and Linksys make dongle-free ethernet / modem combos that take up only the top one of two stacked PCMCIA slots -- this is the other reason that I'm keeping the scavenged cheapo one, because it fits into the bottom slot, so a laptop can be used as relay point for connection sharing that way, even with one of them being a dongle-free protuberance model. No, I've never done it, but it sounds vaguely MacGyverlike.
I like the Linksys one better -- the D-Link *has* worked with Linus (Mandrake 7.1, 7.2), but sometimes seemed to stop working randomly. The Linksys' ethernet port works well.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Fuck what everone else is saying about brand and megahertz and RAM.
Evaluate what you want.
My last two laptops have been purchased because they were light (IBM Thinkpad 560 and Sony VAIO SR7K).
I wanted a light laptop that could do what I needed (working from home or on the road). My first laptop was a Compaq LTE 5300. It quickly made me realize what I valued most in a laptop: lack of weight.
I've spent more on the SR7K than the previous two compined (LTE: $800, Thinkpad: $500). I spent $1,700 on the VAIO. At the time it was a bargain. I just saw an ad for the SR33K going for $999.
In contrast, a friend wanted a desktop replacement. She needed something that she could bring home and still be able to do her work (she's a civil engineer for a good sized city). She has one of the monster VAIO's (an FX series IIRC). The damn thing is HUGE compared to my little SR. However, she has more PCMCIA slots and has the CDROM and DVD internal. I think she also has a larger HD in her model as well.
Both of our machines are running PIII 700MHz's and 128M RAM with 10GB+ HD's. Those are sufficient for just about any kind of work one would want to do on a laptop IMO. We aren't looking to do any rendering nor crunch some serious FEA solves.
Once you decide what you need your laptop to do then you go hunting.
Now to be a hypocrite and preach about the platforms. The SR series is great but it has been somewhat of a pain to find decently priced RAM and batteries for it. I had to hunt awhile on the auction sites to find decent prices for batteries. That said, once the SR series becomes a bit more popolar/sells more units things should be easier to find.
I absolutely love the Thinkpad line! If I could have found a laptop in the Thinkpad line that compared to the deal on the SR I would have gone for it. Excellent keyboards for a laptop.
I like what I've seen with the Apple Ti and new iBooks. I've read about the new iBooks scorching peoples legs though.
Dell's seem to be ok in any arena except the sub 4lb class.
A quick reference:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
A few years ago I had my heart set on the Toshiba Portege 3110ct, but before I bought the computer I checked to see if linux would run on it (using the linux laptop website).
When I bought the machine I had confidence that it would work. I knew there would be issues with winmodem , but since I had internet connection using 10BaseT I choose to ignore this downfall.
Over the years I have tried several versions of Linux, updating to get a clean install every so often. My lastest install was Mandrake 8.0, this managed to auto detect all hardware (also informing me I should go to a particular website for winmodem drivers).
Moral of story, if there is one. Use the web and goto the linux laptop website, as other people give some accounts in what works or does not work with there notebooks under linux. They will note such issues with soundcard, modems, etc. Note: If they installed on a older version of linux, expect some better support for there unsupported hardware (try searching for web for +linux +part or +linux +notebook, and you will most likely find someone working on finish implementing that part)
thanks for the advice, might save me quite a bit.
of course i'm also gonna get a iBook, so maybe not, hehe.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Vaio's are great, and they run Linux great too. ;)
I've got a PCG-FX210, and though I needed to upgrade to kernel 2.4 for the latest drivers to get sound to work, it's been a wonderful system. My only complaint is that the ATI-RAGE3D graphics has only 8MB of memory, which isn't enough for the high-end games.
They also come pre-partitioned, so I simply reformatted the empty partition as a Linux partition, which left the windows side pretty tight on space, but I only use windows to play a couple video games and DVDs. (The linux side plays DVDs, but not in what I'd call an acceptable manner... getting there, though.)
Parity Odd
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Most people overlook the Acer laptops. I've found them rather featureful and light, although I haven't tried running Linux on one yet. I particulary like the smartcard feature of some of the laptops. While this won't prevent people from walking away with it, it does provide an extra level of security. Firewire, USB, modem, Ethernet (some have 802.11 built in), they pack a lot of stuff in a very slim package. And considering Acer is a big manufacturer of laptop LCDs, they tend to be well warrantied and a step ahead of other laptop manufacturers.
Dells are nice however they have many bad points. I have the 7500 and it weighs about 12 pounds. I would highly suggest NOT buying an Inspiron unless it's one of the newer ones. You shoulders will thank you after a long conference where you have been carrying it around for a week. The 15 inch screen is very nice. The case is made of cheap plastic. I have had multi parts break on laptop case. You have to sent it back also, they say they can't "crack" the case open without some special machine ya right.
Key Lime, 366 MHz, 128 MB RAM
I'm running Mac OS X 10.0.4, Mac OS 9.1, Apache 1.3.19, MySQL and XFree86 4.1 w/WindowMaker (among other things). It runs all of those fine, and there is plenty of other software available. It isn't too heavy, the screen resolution is acceptable, it runs things fast enough, it has plenty of ports, and it's eye-catching. Always remember, these old iBooks are masculine, but they're just a little more in touch with their feminine side than most other laptops.
Take a look at DealMac. I saw some refurbished pismo's (the last generation powerbook g3's) listed recently. If you're patient enough, watch for a deal on the new g4's.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Up here in Canada, I have been checking out the Eurocom laptops (primarily the 8500-V) at: http://www.eurocom.ca/ I have been reading good comments about this company and its laptops, and very good comments about its ability to run Linux. The price/feature evaluation compares similarly to the Dell 8000. Dare
I'm posting this from my OS X-powered TiBook, and I've never been happier with a computer. I have it running all day and hooked up to a 21" monitor in dual-screen mode. I get to use the great LCD screen as an extension of the 21", and it's marvelous. Yes, it's $2600, but it's the best laptop (maybe the best personal computer) I've ever owned. I have a Thinkpad T21 that work gave me, and I never even carry it -- no contest whatsoever.
The Gateway Solo 3450 intrigues me because it's fairly powerful, it's lightweight, and it's reasonably priced (750MHz PIII, 192MB RAM, 10GB disk, docking station with floppy and CD drives, 12.1" screen, 3 pounds, $2199). I want to put RH7.1 on it, but am a bit afraid to try it unless someone else has already done it (I'm a novice with Linux). Thanks.