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What Do You Think of ASUS Laptops?

Posted by Cliff on from the community-opinions dept.

Dan Guisinger asks: "I'm looking at replacing a laptop that was recently stolen and came across ASUS's new B1000 series laptop. It seams to have everything one could want, dual FireWire ports, DVD, CDRW, 15" screen, upgradable Pentium III cpu using mPGA2 sockets...it even has finger print security. My only problem while looking at the specs is the measly 1024x768 XGA resolution it supports. I am unable to find reviews on this laptop, nor most other ASUS laptops. Can anyone speak of the quality of their laptops overall? How about this particular model, has anyone seen or used the B1000?"

1 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. While we're on the subject by Merk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What would people consider a good, cheap laptop, and where would you get it?

    My guess for minimal requirements would be:

    • 1024x768 screen (maybe more? I've never owned a laptop so I don't know what's too hard to read
    • 8 GB+ hard drive (I can store most stuff on a server, but I figure I want at least that much for mobility, sound reasonable?)
    • 10 MB Ethernet access as a minimum, wireless as an option (I'm guessing both of these can be handled by PCMCIA cards, is there a reason to go for builtin?)
    • Durable case (If I got a laptop it would travel in a bike courier bag sometimes, a duffel bag other times -- it would need to be somewhat durable)
    • It would have to be able to run Linux (RedHat with KDE ideally)
    • Relatively light -- I bike to/from work so the lighter the better
    • ... Am I missing anything?

    I could imagine using this machine to write code, but probably generally not to build major projects. The speed of the CPU wouldn't be a major issue, and as long as there was a decent amount of memory, (say 128 MB) that would be ok.

    Would an Apple iBook be an option? I like the concept of OSX, and I hear X.1 is reasonably fast, but would it be on an iBook? Are they really durable or do they just look like it because of the titanium shell? Do PPC linux distros run on that hardware? Is it any less open than a typical PC-type laptop?

    As for where to get it, I wouldn't mind getting a used laptop, I'm not looking for cutting-edge, state of the art. Is there anything to look out for in buying a used laptop? Is it reasonably easy to find good used laptops? How about good used Apple laptops?