Oh, mighty LJ Brain: Sell me on a laptop
Oct. 25th, 2007 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsKusanagi is a Thinkpad T23 and have served me well for two years now. But, it was old when I bought it, I have been living at the edge of its diskdrive space for years now, and both the age and the lack of drive space are starting to show. It's just barely fast enough to show movies, but it's unreliable when running the S-Video output, and the battery's old, and it locks up now and then under very heavy load.
I have been thinking about buying a new laptop. Omaha and I have discussed the budget, and basically the best deal would be between $400 and $600, and there's no way I'm allowed to go over a grand.
Here's what I need: Linux compatibility in everything that matters (i.e. everything but the modem, the parallel port, and any infra-red devices). I have a strong preference to nipple mice over touchpads. An x86 processor. Very long battery life-- the longer the better. Linux supports means it must suspend and come back without being cranky-- i.e. no shutting down X-windows and then coming back to make it "go" because the video drivers are flaked. Given my bad habits, the thing must be business-class rugged, ready to travel. Given my work habits, I'd like as big a monitor as possible, but I'll live with a 14.1" if necessary.
It would look like the IBM T43 would be ideal, but so far every Thinkpad I've owned has had a hardware, um, idiosyncracy. There were easy work-arounds for the other two, but the T43 series has a reputation for bad fan control, causing "pulsing" and noise. What other laptops in my price range qualify for my rugged needs?
I have been thinking about buying a new laptop. Omaha and I have discussed the budget, and basically the best deal would be between $400 and $600, and there's no way I'm allowed to go over a grand.
Here's what I need: Linux compatibility in everything that matters (i.e. everything but the modem, the parallel port, and any infra-red devices). I have a strong preference to nipple mice over touchpads. An x86 processor. Very long battery life-- the longer the better. Linux supports means it must suspend and come back without being cranky-- i.e. no shutting down X-windows and then coming back to make it "go" because the video drivers are flaked. Given my bad habits, the thing must be business-class rugged, ready to travel. Given my work habits, I'd like as big a monitor as possible, but I'll live with a 14.1" if necessary.
It would look like the IBM T43 would be ideal, but so far every Thinkpad I've owned has had a hardware, um, idiosyncracy. There were easy work-arounds for the other two, but the T43 series has a reputation for bad fan control, causing "pulsing" and noise. What other laptops in my price range qualify for my rugged needs?
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Date: 2007-10-26 06:02 am (UTC)Everything worked out-of-box with Ubuntu feisty and gutsy, although if you have an ATI video card, in gutsy you'll have to decide between the fast video driver (the closed-source one) and the ability to suspend. I chose suspend. I wish I had chosen to get a non-ATI video card.
Oh, the fingerprint reader didn't work out of box. I had to muck with that. But wireless, laptop-mode (longer battery life!), trackpad, full resolution, ethernet, and even the hotbuttons on the laptop (volume up/down, screen brightness up/down, sleep, hibernate, mute, etc.) all worked without any effort on my part.
I haven't found a better laptop for linux.