Oh, mighty LJ Brain: Sell me on a laptop

[elfs]

Kusanagi 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?

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

How well does it do suspend/resume? My last two laptops (TP 600E, TP T23) did suspend (not hibernate) fabulously, to the point where Appleheads were envious at the 'on' time!

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

Never tried it, and I'm not sure how to go about making it suspend. Tell me, and I'll try it out over the weekend.