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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?
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 $400 off of eBay. ~Will
This might not be a popular response for /., but I have a bunch of laptops and notice that I always carry the lightest one if in any way possible. For most of the things you do on the road, anything you can buy nowadays is plenty powerful enough. Another rather important consideration if battery life. I have pretty good luck borrowing power in airports and hotels, but a laptop that shuts down after less than 3 hours is annoying.
As far as quality goes, I had pretty good luck with Dell, some with Sony and none with Toshiba and IBM. But YMMVW. If your company is buying, get the replace-and-send-back warranty.
Is an IBM Thinkpad i1400. It's a decent thinkpad, winmodem, but intel NIC (integrated). the screen is only 800x600 (blah!) but the newer low end (read: ~1,000-1,500$) 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.
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
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. --
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.
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.